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This article argues that how the United Nations (UN) conceptualizes legitimacy is not only a matter of legalism or power politics. The UNs conception of legitimacy also utilizes concepts, language and symbolism from the religious realm. Understanding the entanglement between political and religious concepts and the ways of their verbalization at the agential level sheds light on how legitimacy became to be acknowledged as an integral part of the UN and how it changes. At the constitutional level, the article examines phrases and 'verbal symbols', enshrined in the Charter of the 'secular church' UN. They evoke intrinsic legitimacy claims based on religious concepts and discourse such as hope and salvation. At the agential level, the article illustrates how the Secretary-General verbalizes those abstract constitutional principles of legitimacy. Religious language and symbolism in the constitutional framework and agential practice of the UN does not necessarily produce an exclusive form of legitimacy. This article shows, however, that legitimacy as nested in the UNs constitutional setting cannot exist without religious templates because they remain a matter of a 'cultural frame'. ; (VLID)5870087 ; Version of record

The phenomenon of climate change is very complex one. Climate change and problems of its causes and eff ects are being reserched and analyzed by many researchers, scholars, authors and by representatives of other sciences. A number of books and articles have been written on the climate change process. This is determined by the specifi city of the researched problem, which is requiring to analyze it through an interdisciplinary approach, more specifi c through geopolitical perspective. Since the late 1990s, the European Union (EU) has racked up a series of apparently impressive climate policy achievements which lend substance to the oft-heard claim that it is a global leader in the fi eld. In this context, novel ways to share the eff orts required to reduce emissions between its Member States and across diff erent economic sectors have been developed.