Beyond standard views of legitimacy

In the standard view of global governance, change happens when there are shifts in the international distribution of power and states proactively address problems associated with interdependent choice. In contrast, Zürn argues that legitimacy is there at the very beginning and interwoven throughout the lives of global governance institutions. Consistent with many leading institutionalist analyses, Zürn argues that states, and primarily the rich and powerful, create global governance institutions to pursue common interests and solve transnational problems. Although the temptation is to create institutions that reflect or exploit their privilege, denying lesser powers a voice would create institutions that lack legitimacy and are absent the requirements for long-term stability. Consequently, the powerful design institutions with rules that create a more impartial process that will be more widely accepted by all members. But more impartial does not mean impartial, and there are limits to the ‘benevolence’ of major states.

After creation, global governance institutions are likely to confront a barrage of legitimacy problems that are produced by their ‘natural’ development. Zürn highlights two. The first legitimacy problem is caused by growing political bias. The powerful might create institutions with rules that reduce inequality, but they are still unequal, and they can evolve in ways that increases and illuminates the political bias. Also, powerful states will take advantage of their positions when pursing core interests. Moreover, powerful states impose control mechanisms on institutions to ensure that they reflect, and do not harm, their interests. Another possibility, not explicitly explored by Zürn, is that bureaucracies can develop an organizational culture that makes them deferent to the wishes of the powerful. The UN can be highly self-censoring because of its fear of offending the very states that control its resources. In short, impartiality is an aspiration that is constantly battered by the forces of partiality.

The other legitimacy problem owes to how the technocratic character of these global governance institutions can undermine their perceived impartiality, a point also made by Pouliot. Global governance institutions, ideally, have a rational-legal authority that is legitimated in part by their development of and adherence to objective rules, standards, and decision-making processes that are applied fairly and indiscriminately to demands from the environment. The rules of the bureaucracy are made, guarded, and applied by technocrats, those that use expert knowledge to find the most efficient response to problems. But the very technocratic character of global governance institutions that can bolster their legitimacy can also undermine it. If they follow the knowledge rather than the politics, then they will be relatively immune and unaccountable to the public, leading to the distinct possibility of arbitrary power. In other words, from the vantage of the principals and the public, technocracy might produce both impartiality (because action is limited to the objective rules) and partiality (because these are rules as defined by bureaucrats).

Global governance institutions might have a genetic predisposition to a chronic deficiency in legitimacy, but, at times, these deficiencies can build to toxic levels. Importantly, Zürn argues that this deficit only becomes a severe problem when actors mobilize to delegitimate these institutions. States and their global governance institutions can respond in one of three ways: institutional change that represents an effective response to the challenge; counter-institutionalization and the ability of states to forum shop or develop alternatives; and gridlock. While the latter two responses are likely to reinforce the forces of decline, the former can possibly reverse the downward trajectory and lead to a deepening of global governance. What decline and deepening looks like, though, is unclear. Evidence of decline appears to exist when delegitimation processes continue apace or intensify. Evidence of deepening exists when institutions adjust in a way to survive, as suggested by the case study of the UN's response to its perceived violations of human rights. In this instance, Zürn observes a deepening over the last two decades because various UN organizations have passed laws, created resolutions, and revised rules to acknowledge responsibility and accountability for the harms they caused. But I see relatively little evidence that statements and texts have been translated into concrete action. Moreover, Zürn does not directly discuss which audiences are being impacted by these responses by the UN. Legitimacy is a social construct and is socially conferred. For the most part, Zürn focuses on the legitimacy as conferred by states and important non-state actors such as human rights organizations. But has there been an increase in the legitimacy of the UN from the standpoint of those who have been directly harmed by its actions?

Beyond legitimacy

Zürn makes a compelling case that the decline of legitimacy can be an important cause of change in global governance. He poses his legitimacy-based account against standard materialist and functionalist alternatives, and uses three moments of transformation to make his case: World War Two, the end of the Cold War, and post-9/11 (which includes both al-Qaeda's attack on the United States and the rise of the BRICs). These are not fully developed case studies, but they are designed to provide support for his theory of global governance. Before discussing some limitations, I want to emphasize that Zürn is not surveying the entire history of global governance, which, according to many, began in the 19^th century, but rather its post-1945 history. The methodological assumption, then, is that this post-1945 period, and its three subperiods, are a representative sample of the entire history. They might be. But legitimacy might have become increasingly important after 1945, or there might have been a change in the social purpose, especially if after 1945 global governance increasingly expressed a cosmopolitan intent. In any event, I want to suggest how each period potentially undermines or complicates Zürn's theory.

Let us begin with the postwar period. Zürn argues that major transformations of global governance are caused by legitimation problems, which presumes that interwar global governance can be characterized as one major legitimation crisis. This is certainly one way of describing the rise of Nazi Germany, fascism, nationalism, and populism; the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fire bombings and the millions of dead and displaced. But to call this a legitimacy problem seems euphemistic, to say the least. At the time policymakers, diplomats, intellectuals, and the media referred to the world order as being ravaged by barbarism, inhumanity, and assaults on the very belief in progress. In any event, Zürn's narrative does not directly address whether this run-up to World War Two constituted a legitimacy problem, instead jumping to the postwar period. Here he follows the familiar realist-institutionalist accounts, emphasizing how the United States and other European states wanted to create postwar institutions that had buy-in from the great and lesser powers who were expected to participate in them. Toward that end, the United States created global institutions that were not necessarily without bias but rather were less biased than might have been the case had the United States wanted to exploit its position of power. As others in this forum suggest, there is a debate to be had regarding whether these institutions were reproduced by a sense of obligation or deference by its members. Following other institutionalist and some constructivist accounts, Zürn also suggests that these institutions had a social purpose.

Yet, the expansion of global governance and its membership after World War Two posed a substantial challenge to the legitimacy of global governance, though Zürn tends to gloss over this fact. A history written from the Third World tells a different story. Colonial states at the time, the postwar pillars of global governance institutions were created without their participation and did not reflect their sense of the social purpose. There were moments when Third World states did reform existing organizations to give them more of a voice and created new institutions to reflect their interests, particularly in areas such as development. Yet, the postwar period contained various events and movements that directly assailed the legitimacy of the global governance institutions. Many Third World intellectuals adopted W.E.B. Du Bois's notion of the color line to analyze contemporary inequalities in global governance.Footnote ⁴ Non-aligned states met in Bandung in 1955 to try and carve out an alternative agenda.Footnote ⁵ There was the New International Economic Order.Footnote ⁶ And since the end of the Cold War there have been various gatherings to protest the establishment's view of social purpose.Footnote ⁷ This neglected history unsettles any claim regarding the legitimacy of global governance during this period. And once it is accounted for, it raises the question of how it relates to Zürn's hypothesized route of deepening.

The post-Cold War period raises additional concerns regarding the importance of legitimacy for producing a change in global governance. Specifically, Zürn discounts the impact of the end of the Cold War and the death of the Soviet Union, which begs the question of: what triggered the subsequent deepening and rise of global governance? Instead of legitimacy, Zürn credits this development to a reduction of ideological differences and the globalization of a functionally differentiated governance system.Footnote ⁸ But, if I am correct that the postwar global governance order was not nearly as legitimate as Zürn suggests, then perhaps legitimacy does have something to do with it. Indeed, the contemporary concept of global governance was birthed at this moment. With the departure of the bipolar order under the control of the United States and the Soviet Union, the concept of global governance was offered as a vision of a more inclusive world order: it would provide a voice for weak and non-state actors; widen the global agenda to include once neglected social problems such as human rights and human security; and create a world order constituted by a more genuinely collective purpose.Footnote ⁹ Zürn, importantly, notes that this period also invested more power and authority in the hands of relatively isolated international civil servants and anonymous transnational experts, which contributed to the post-2001 legitimacy problems because it created a technocratic class disconnected from those affected by its decisions.

I agree with Zürn that legitimacy helps explain the current crisis in global governance, but other factors need to be considered, as well. Some of them might be viewed as part of legitimacy, but in a manner slightly different from Zürn's definition. There is the question of effectiveness and the inability to deliver the goods. In addition to the lack of effectiveness, there also is the UN's cause of considerable harm to those it was supposed to protect: the cholera in Haiti, its quasi-bystander status at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, sexual abuse by peacekeepers, and on and on.

Another possibility is that the crisis of global governance is bound up with the purported crisis of the LIO. Several points should be considered in this context. Global governance and the LIO are not the same things. Following Zürn, global governance can be defined as ‘the exercise of authority across national borders as well as contested norms and rules beyond the nation state, both of them justified with reference to common goods or transnational problems’.Footnote ¹⁰ There is no accepted definition of the LIO.Footnote ¹¹ Scholars refer to the LIO in a mish-mash of ways, but regardless of the definition the underlying fear is that its decline will hamper global governance and the ability to solve global problems.

Yet, many define the LIO in ways that are thin on liberalism itself or include values that are not exclusive to liberalism. For instance, Ikenberry argues that liberal internationalism is organized around five commitments: openness, which increases interdependence, gains from all forms of exchange, greater awareness and knowledge of others' experiences, and solidarity; a rules-based system that are generalized and nondiscriminatory; forms of security cooperation; the capacity to learn; and the expectation that states will move in a ‘progressive direction, defined in terms of liberal democracy’.Footnote ¹² Defined in this way, the decline of the LIO might have little impact on global governance. For instance, in 2017 at Davos, Chinese Premier Xi Jingping emphasized the importance of a rule-based system. Rules, in other words, do not have to be or be called liberal to be rules and to produce world order.Footnote ¹³

Where does Zürn stand on this possible relationship between global governance and the LIO? On the one hand, he defines global governance in ways that appear to be indifferent to liberalism: the exercise of authority across borders to solve common problems. On the other hand, liberalism enters Zürn's discussion of global governance when he suggests that global governance's legitimacy is dependent on its ‘impartial pursuit of the social purpose’.Footnote ¹⁴ From this perspective, a process of impartiality includes equality, fair treatment, participation, representation, and accountability. These values are not owned and operated by liberalism, but they certainly are closely associated with it. Social purpose consists of common goals and procedures on how to achieve it.Footnote ¹⁵ Which are what? Zürn leaves this open-ended, presumably because it is for the ‘public’, and not for him, to decide. But, according to him, part of the purpose includes the promotion and defense of an impartial process and the values that support it. The values that support such an impartial process, it turns out, resemble the values that define an impartial purpose. Zürn's version of global governance is intertwined with liberalism.

This discussion raises the further question of the relationship between the legitimacy of the international order and the legitimacy of its institutions. Following the sociological claim that all political orders need legitimacy if they are to rule without constant coercion, constructivist scholars re-introduced the concept of legitimacy to theorize about international order. A more recent wave of constructivist-oriented scholarship has focused less on the international order and more on particular international institutions, organizations, and law. Toward that end, they have used qualitative and quantitative methods to try and gage the legitimacy of a range of international organizations (IOs), mostly those that are part of the UN system or the EU. But what do the assessments of the legitimacy of these specific institutions tells us about the legitimacy of, say, the (liberal) international order?Footnote ¹⁶ What do surveys and polls of European residents regarding their support for specific EU institutions tells us about the legitimacy of global governance? The connections need to be made.

Global governance with cosmopolitan features

The importance of liberalism in Zürn's account becomes clearer when he turns to global governance with cosmopolitan intent. Cosmopolitan intent has an empirical, institutional, and moral element. The moral element ‘can be defined by individualism (human beings are the ultimate units of concern), generality (all human beings are of concern), and universality (all human beings are of equal concern)’.Footnote ¹⁷ These elements combine in different ways and in different intensities to produce four distinct models: an intergovernmental model of democratic states; cosmopolitan pluralism; a minimal world state (that draws from Habermas and the Frankfurt School); and a cosmopolitan democracy. Democracy is central to all four models, and the presumption is that liberal values help to promote and reproduce democracy. Ergo, liberalism helps to constitute cosmopolitan intent. Zürn is making an historical and normative claim: global governance has deepened over the decades and in a direction that is consistent with a cosmopolitan intent. This historical development also represents a form of moral progress, which evolves not because of a sequence of accidents but rather because of willful intent and interventions.

But one actor's progress is another's crisis. The current United States assault on the existing global governance system arguably owes not only to a revolt against political bias, or the runaway power of international institutions, ineffectiveness, or even the lack of liberalism. It also owes to the very familiar view of cosmopolitanism and global governance from the view of an egoistic nationalism. Historically speaking, there is a variable and unsettled relationship between nationalism and forms of internationalism and cosmopolitanism.Footnote ¹⁸ During the 19^th century and the rise of nationalism, cosmopolitanism was a dirty word. Over the 20^th century they began to find a common ground. But the recent period of a resurgent nationalism and the othering of those that are defined as outside the national identity is reminiscent of the 19^th century.Footnote ¹⁹ The United States has followed this pattern, but with a conservatism that runs hot and cold on the UN and other global governance institutions because of the potential threat to the sovereignty and national character of the American people. This position has ascended with a vengeance over the last few years and lodged itself in the White House. For the Trump White House, global governance is championed by globalists that are a threat to the identity and interests of the United States.Footnote ²⁰ The United States is not acting alone but rather is part mob, part flight of the bumble bees. Yet, its views matter more than most.

A change in or of global governance?

Zürn claims that the lack of legitimacy can diminish global governance, and its replenishment can deepen it, but suggests that in either case it remains the same recognizable form – a constellation of IOs.Footnote ²¹ Yet, one of the notable features of contemporary global governance is its growing diversity.Footnote ²² What if the decline of legitimacy, alongside other forces, is contributing to this diversity and a shift in the modes of global governance? As so many scholars have previously noted, whereas global governance used to be organized around IOs, now there is a diversity of architectures involving states, IOs, and non-state actors in new kinds of relationships. Or, otherwise put, the change in form represents a change of global governance.

One way to think about a change of global governance is in terms of its modes.Footnote ²³ Stylistically speaking, global governance, like all forms of governance, can be organized around hierarchies, markets, and networks. There has been a shift from the former to the latter two in recent decades, alongside a shadow of hierarchy that helps stabilize market and networked governance. Hierarchical modes are characterized by top-down, centralized, organizational forms. The Hobbesian state is the ideal-typical example of a hierarchical form of governance, especially to the extent that it has enforcement mechanisms to generate compliance with its rules. Within the realm of global governance, IOs are the closest to hierarchical governance. IOs often have a bureaucratic character, with a chain-of command, specialization, and standard operating procedures for translating inputs into outputs. One issue concerns whether the ‘boss’ is always a state or states. Obviously, most of these IOs are created by and for states, and thus their centralized activities and functions are delegated by states. This suggests that rather than imagining that IOs are atop the global governance food chain, states are always behind the curtain and stand in a relationship of superordination.

Hierarchies command; markets incentivize. Market modes of governance are organized around non-hierarchical principles, often associated with a ‘hidden hand’ or unregulated competition – though this competition rests on certain hierarchical features, such as secure property rights and enforcement of contracts. The assumption is that actors (sometimes referred to as consumers or producers) are rational, utility-maximizing actors that pursue their interests through voluntary exchange. The ‘worth’ of what they intend to purchase or sell is measured by the price; prices, then, contain information. Market modes of governance are quite common in global economic governance, with the assumption that regulation can be managed largely through price mechanisms. Some of the most interesting experiments and innovations in global governance are built on the logic of markets. To encourage a shift from nonrenewable to renewable sources of energy, many states have subsidized the production and instillation of solar panels. NGOs want to regulate firms through various kinds of certification measures, such as fair trade or living wage; in doing so, they attempt to influence the incentives for firms to alter their behavior to conform with international norms. There are NGOs that certify whether coffee has been harvested and sold through ‘fair trade’ standards. Other forms of market modes of governance include benchmarking and rating systems, which cause actors to change their behavior to maintain or lift their reputation, and, therefore, their stream of benefits. As Kelley and Simmons (Reference Kelley and Simmons2020) detail, there are now an impressive number of ranking systems that grade everything from states to universities, and these rankings often encourage states to alter their behavior so that it is consistent with what a ‘good state’ looks like.Footnote ²⁴

Network modes are probably the most difficult to define precisely because there is no consensus definition, varying tremendously from subject to subject, discipline to discipline, and practitioner to scholar, and depending on whether networks are seen as emerging from hierarchies or markets.Footnote ²⁵ At the most generic level, markets exist whenever there are enduring ties between actors. In this definition, though, markets and hierarchies also can count as networks – the former have enduring ties and the latter are tied formally. Instead, the concept of network is better used to capture not the fact of on-going exchange but rather the quality of the exchange and how governance is produced. The actors that form a network are interdependent, in contrast to hierarchies that are defined by dependence and markets by independence. There is a common purpose or interest among the actors. There is relative and formal equality between the participants. Disputes and differences of opinion are arbitrated and resolved through negotiation and persuasion.Footnote ²⁶ Because of the voluntary, interdependent nature of the exchange, and the absence of any enforcement mechanism, there must be considerable trust for networks to function.Footnote ²⁷

A major development in global governance is the growing significance of networks. There are transgovernmental networks, epistemic communities, transnational activists, and professional networks, often containing epistemic authority, as discussed by Pouliot in this forum. These networks are increasingly present in a range of issue areas, including those that once were dominated by states. There are human rights networks, in which various NGOs and other nonstate actors collaborate for the purposes of creating, monitoring, and enforcing human rights. Networks are credited with helping to put and keep climate change on the global agenda. A coalition of networks, working in conjunction with a selective number of allied states, has made impressive changes to the regulation of war, including, for instance, the landmine ban.Footnote ²⁸ Many of these movements are comprised of transnational activists, yet other forms of transnationalism are comprised of experts; if the former often legitimates its presence through the language of values and humanity, the latter uses specialized knowledge to maintain and promote its expert authority.Footnote ²⁹

What accounts for this shift from hierarchical to market and network forms of governance? Among the many possibilities, several are particularly relevant here. One is a legitimation problem. A Theory ties legitimacy to process and social purpose, but legitimacy might also be tied to effectiveness. Global governance is judged not only on whether it operates inclusively and projects the right social purpose, but also whether it delivers the goods. IOs might once have been perceived to be the optimal way to solve global problems, but they have fallen out of favor to markets and networks. Two, many major and minor players steered toward minilateralism and other restricted arrangements because an open-ended and inclusive process was creating gridlock. In other words, there was a concern with the process, but not necessarily in the way detailed in A Theory. Three, major players attempted to shift to alternative arrangements that they could better control. As Zürn and others observe, large powers often create global governance institutions, and in a manner that advances their interests while yielding authority to lesser powers in order to generate legitimate, durable global governance institutions. But as the process becomes more inclusive and permits minor actors more say, the large powers are likely to shift to alternative arrangements which they can better control. For instance, while many multistakeholder architectures give the appearance of being more ‘flat’, they also operate according to rules that preserve the power of the major actors.Footnote ³⁰ Relatedly, nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations might prefer forums in which they have (more) voice; whereas they are often banished from multilateral forums or have to rely on states to represent their positions, these alternative arrangements often want to have the stakeholders in the room (though probably not at the table).

Assuming that there has been a shift from hierarchies to networks and markets, and that the existence of increasingly pronounced hierarchies might have undermined the legitimacy of global governance, then it is worth speculating about whether these alternative forms might be a better fit for a world of growing populism and nationalism. Networks and markets might have one major advantage over hierarchies – the perception that they are more responsive to local conditions, interests, and wants. Hierarchies have many advantages, but Zürn's analysis, supported by a wide swathe of organizational theory, suggests that markets and networks might score higher on measures of legitimacy. But I emphasize might. And because these forms are more legitimate does not necessarily mean that they are better able to address global public problems.

Futures

Where is global governance headed? Certainly there will be more complexity in terms of its organization. In addition to the shifting modes, there also is the growing overlap and layering of once separate issues of global governance, sometimes referred to as regime complexity.Footnote ³¹ A second possibility is a decline of global governance. Legitimation problems might have something to do with it. Zürn might suggest that there is a rejection of its social purpose, distress regarding its democratic deficits, or objection to its growing intrusiveness and challenge to state sovereignty. For many pundits and some scholars, though, growing nationalism is leading states to allow the short-term to dominate the long-term, to fear the ‘other’, and to mistrust international institutions whose job is to help states overcome their fears and forge cooperation.Footnote ³²

Zürn posits a third possibility, one that is rarely discussed at this moment: a deepening of global governance he associates with a future ‘global governance with cosmopolitan intent’ – a global governance organized around the principle of humanity and defended by strong, democratic global institutions. He envisions four possible kinds of global governance with cosmopolitan intent: an intergovernmentalism of democratic states; cosmopolitan pluralism; a minimal world state; and a cosmopolitan democracy. These are not just abstract possibilities, but rather real and existing potentials: since 1945 global governance has addressed its legitimacy problems in ways that have nurtured cosmopolitanism. Indeed, a decade ago such prophecies were common, and those who predicted the demise of global governance were far and few between. Now such hopeful prognoses seem Whiggish. Zürn is hardly Pollyannaish, as he addresses the possibility of both decline and deepening. Deepening is most likely, he seems to suggest, when there is no alternative but to go global to solve urgent problems.Footnote ³³ This is all very rational, and certainly quite possible.

But this quasi-functionalist argument does not acknowledge one other tension within global governance, and especially global governance with a cosmopolitan intent: identity. Zürn and others define global governance as solving common goods and transnational problems. Power and technocracy is needed to address these global problems. But too much of a good thing can be dangerous and unleash a set of contradictions that pose legitimation problems. Beyond posing legitimacy problems at the global level, it also can create a threat to local and national identities. Cosmopolitanism and nationalism are not necessarily zero-sum, but they certainly can be depending on how each is defined (and often in relationship to the other). There is an implicit expectation, sometimes explicit as in the case of the EU, that functionalism is supposed to produce broader and more inclusive identities and attachments. But this positive-sum possibility also exists alongside the alternative that scaling things up can increase feelings of alienation, which, in turn, can create a greater demand for the renewal of local and national identities that are posed as sanctuaries against globalizing forces. To say that global governance does and should have a cosmopolitan intent is to demand that individuals adopt some form of a cosmopolitan identity and identify with and feel obligations and duties with distant strangers. But this can also rip people from their roots. For many, the revolt against global governance is not simply a return of nationalism in its most pejorative meaning but an attempt to maintain a sense of self. Cosmopolitanism is not devoid of emotion, but cannot easily compete with the feelings associated with local and national identities. Global governance has been upselling. Less might be more.