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ABSTRACT
Do requirements for legitimate global governance vary across intergovernmental and non-state governance institutions? The author introduces a framework to address this question that draws attention to the social forces and power dynamics at play in determining what standards of legitimacy apply. Rather than beginning with a focus on democratic legitimacy, which pre-judges what legitimacy requires, the framework posits that what constitutes legitimacy results from an interaction of communities who must accept the authority of the institution with broader legitimating norms and discourses – or social structure – that prevail in the relevant issue area. To illustrate its plausibility, the framework is applied to a comparison of intergovernmental and non-state institutions in the social and environmental issue area: the intergovernmental Kyoto Protocol on climate change and members of the non-state International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labeling Alliance, an umbrella organization created to develop agreement on ‘best practices’ for its members. Implications of the findings for legitimacy of global economic governance are also explored.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank James Brassett, Peter Hass, Susan Park, Mat Paterson and three anonymous reviewers for very useful comments and criticisms. Joanna Defoe, Jayne Grigorovich, Mark Purdon and Jonathan Sas provided valuable research and editorial assistance. The ISEAL case draws from collaborative research with Benjamin Cashore and Erin Hannah. Generous funding was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Notes
1 In December 2009 (after this article was accepted for publication) governments at the UNFCCC fifteenth Conference of the Parties agreed to the Copenhagen Accord (UNFCCC, 2009), a non-binding political statement on future commitments, policy direction and financing to address climate change. While it remains unclear whether it will evolve on a parallel track to the KP, the following points are important for the argument here: it was negotiated within the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol negotiating process; the umbrella UNFCCC remains the primary platform for climate change negotiations; the Accord does not supersede the Kyoto Protocol but rather operates along with it; and the Accord reaffirms the UNFCCC's and Kyoto's basic principles, although it goes further in providing a framework for developing country commitments while backing away from binding commitments for any party. Thus, the Accord does not undermine the KP's legitimacy, even as it highlights its limitations and that an evolution in climate change governance is underway.
2 Attempts in global governance scholarship include CitationZweifel (2006), CitationMoravcsik (2004) and CitationBäckstrand (2006a).
3 I use the term community rather than public to avoid a necessary association with the state, but still retain the denotation of ‘publicness’ in the sense that its members collectively empower political authority.
4 CitationWeber (1978). Scholars disagree over whether legitimacy is constitutive of authority (CitationHurd, 2007: 60) or authority can exist absent legitimacy (CitationKoppell, 2008; CitationUphoff, 1989). While I tend toward the former position since authority is generally understood as a ‘right’ to rule, the debate is largely irrelevant to this paper's focus on requirements for ‘legitimate’ authority.
5 These conceptions come from CitationBarnett and Duvall's (2005) fourfold typology of power in global governance.
6 This discussion is not meant to imply that structural power is unimportant in environmental governance (see CitationNewell, 2008). Moreover, the various forms of power are agnostic in the mix of ideational and material resources or source of power that ultimately produces social structure. Determining that mix is beyond the scope of this paper.
7 Representative examples include CitationHeld (1995), CitationBodansky (1999), CitationBuchanan and Keohane (2006), CitationZürn (2000), CitationGreven and Pauly (2000), CitationYoung (2001), CitationPayne and Samhat (2004), CitationRisse (2006) and CitationBäckstrand (2006a).
8 Others (CitationDevetak and Higgott, 1999; CitationFranck, 1995; CitationSinger, 2004) argue conditions under globalization have sufficiently changed that justice and legitimacy may be linked globally as they are within the state.
9 This is the first common framework, of which I am aware, for this purpose.
10 Current debate over whether or how to re-regulate the global economy is potentially important in this regard since it may produce further pushback on norms of liberal environmentalism. However, it is equally plausible that path dependencies in global environmental institutions and entrenched interests may reinforce it.
11 It is articulated in UNFCCC Article 3.1 and KP Article 10, as well as Principle 7 of the 1992 Rio Declaration.
12 David Victor (2006), who has been a vocal and influential KP critic, had previously argued that international efforts should focus on a ‘k group’ or minimum winning coalition that makes collective action rational.
13 The Copenhagen Accord (UNFCCC, 2009) responds in principle to this conflict since under it major developing countries can pledge emission targets, while the idea of differential commitments for developed and developing countries remains. However, this breakthrough came at the expense of making commitments for all countries, developed or developing, non-binding.
14 Paterson's analysis focuses on potential structural legitimacy problems rooted in contradictions between capital accumulation (which drives marketization) and the environmental goals of climate governance. My focus is different: to analyze what legitimates the Kyoto Protocol as the accepted authority in global governance to address the issue.
15 Twenty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with delegates to annual climate change negotiations in 2005, 2006 and 2007, in addition to informal discussions with other delegates. Interviewees were from government (including major emitters such as the United States, China, Canada, Russia and India), NGOs and UN offices.
16 Only one developed country delegate argued that equity and legitimacy were separate issues.
17 Confidential telephone interview following COP 12, 15 December 2006.
18 CitationBetsill and Hoffmann (2009). ‘Active’ refers to any of the following stages of development: deliberation, rule-making or operation.
19 The overlap is not perfect because other actors (e.g. international organizations, transnational actors), directly or through states, may also influence the content of social structure.
20 Confidential interview, 12 January 2006.
21 For a detailed analysis of trade rules and transnational standard setting, see CitationBernstein and Hannah (2008).
22 The impetus came from the Clinton administration as part of its promotion of labor standard certification, which eventually led to its financial support of the Fair Labor Association and SAI (CitationBartley, 2003: 450).
23 Interview, Gareth Steel, Policy Desk Officer, European Commission, DG Trade, Unit G3: Sustainable Development, 3 June 2005, Brussels.
24 Canada, the United States, UK, Germany and Sweden.
25 Confidential interviews with staff of ISO and ISEAL; Clapp (1998).