Suchergebnisse

The digital pdf of Chapter 15 is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This collection brings together leading figures in the study of international relations to explore praxis as a perspective on international politics and law. With its focus on competent judgments, the praxis approach holds the promise to overcome the divide between knowing and acting that marks positivist international relations theory.
Building on the transdisciplinary work of Friedrich Kratochwil, this book reveals the scope, limits and blind spots of praxis theorizing.

This volume examines the development of the idea of 'technocratic internationalism': the promotion of the involvement of experts in the workings of international relations, especially in international organizations such as the United Nations and European Union.

This volume examines the development of the idea of 'technocratic internationalism': the promotion of the involvement of experts in the workings of international relations, especially in international organizations such as the United Nations and European Union.

Focusing on the development of justificatory discourse on global governance, this book examines how differing conceptions of distributive and social justice have played a role in negotiations in the domains of security, economics, and protecting the environment

Abstract
It is commonplace to say that international organizations (IOs) face a legitimacy crisis because they are perceived as undemocratic, unaccountable, and inefficient. Plausible as it may seem, this still must count as a conjecture. In this article, I review the rapidly growing literature that has explored this connection empirically. I follow three strands of research that approach the legitimacy of IOs from different angles. The first strand explores individual beliefs through observational and experimental surveys. The second strand analyzes public discourses, mapping arguments deployed to (de-)legitimize IOs. The third strand studies political action related to legitimacy, such as protest voting, street demonstrations, and withdrawal of member states from IOs. The empirical evidence shows that citizens expect fair procedures and balanced outcomes also in international politics; that legitimation discourses revolve around democratic standards and not only performance; and that institutions respond to protests. It is less clear, however, how the three dimensions of (de-)legitimation interact. I argue that we need to triangulate them more systematically to see the connections between beliefs, arguments, and political action at work. I suggest in-depth case studies, sensitive to the context and content of legitimation debates, that cover these three dimensions and their interactions simultaneously.

It is commonplace to say that international organizations (IOs) face a legitimacy crisis because they are perceived as undemocratic, unaccountable, and inefficient. Plausible as it may seem, this still must count as a conjecture. In this article, I review the rapidly growing literature that has explored this connection empirically. I follow three strands of research that approach the legitimacy of IOs from different angles. The first strand explores individual beliefs through observational and experimental surveys. The second strand analyzes public discourses, mapping arguments deployed to (de-)legitimize IOs. The third strand studies political action related to legitimacy, such as protest voting, street demonstrations, and withdrawal of member states from IOs. The empirical evidence shows that citizens expect fair procedures and balanced outcomes also in international politics; that legitimation discourses revolve around democratic standards and not only performance; and that institutions respond to protests. It is less clear, however, how the three dimensions of (de-)legitimation interact. I argue that we need to triangulate them more systematically to see the connections between beliefs, arguments, and political action at work. I suggest in-depth case studies, sensitive to the context and content of legitimation debates, that cover these three dimensions and their interactions simultaneously.

'Throughput legitimacy' is among the most successful conceptual innovations that scholars of public policy and administration have produced in recent years. I argue that this new understanding of legitimacy needs to be seen in the context of an increasing proceduralism in political science and public administration. Throughput legitimacy attracted so much attention because it is the perfect normative companion to the analytical concept of governance. Governance is procedure, and throughput legitimacy tells us what good procedures are. In my critical discussion of this innovation I examine the analytical value of the concept, as well as its normative and practical implications. I argue that, regarding concept formation, throughput legitimacy may enrich existing typologies of legitimacy but at the same time has a severe problem of fuzzy borders. Politically, throughput legitimacy lends itself to apologetic uses when it is applied as a tailor‐made normative standard for technocratic, non‐majoritarian institutions.

In 1934, the Italian diplomat and scholar Giuseppe de Michelis (1872−1951) published a programmatic book that in English was called 'World Reorganisation on Corporative Lines'. In this study, de Michelis suggested transferring the socio-economic model of fascist Italy to the global level. He thus envisaged global economic governance by a powerful international organisation and a strict limitation of national sovereignty over the factors of production. My purpose in this article is to explore these largely forgotten proposals as well as the ideological context from which they emerged. The fascist internationalism of de Michelis was technocratic and dirigist, enthusiastic about the possibilities of public planning and the virtues of bureaucratic organisation. This is why his suggestions resembled, in some important respects, world order proposals made by liberal internationalists during the same period. The lesson for International Relations theory is that blueprints for international institutions can be connected to a wide variety of political ideologies. There is no reason to believe that any tradition of political thought is necessarily and eternally committed to internationalism, while others are principally hostile to it.

In this article I seek to expand our understanding of the output legitimacy of international organizations (IOs). At the conceptual level, I refute the widespread view that output legitimacy is just a synonym for organizational effectiveness or efficiency. I argue instead that output legitimacy has an important democratic dimension. The touchstone of 'democratic output legitimacy' is the extent to which systems of governance produce results that cater to the public interest. Accordingly, the democratic output legitimacy of IOs can be understood in terms of their ability to safeguard the global public interest. This ability hinges upon their capacity to keep powerful factions in check, protect human rights, and safeguard a high epistemic quality of decisions. Attaining these qualities may require shielding IOs to some extent from the input dimension of the international political process. I do not, however, unconditionally praise de-politicization of IOs. I engage with the problem of technocratic paternalism, which is imminent when decision-making based on assumed citizen interests escapes confrontation with articulated citizen interests. The challenge is to devise global governance arrangements that enable an encompassing debate over the substance of the global public interest when needed, while keeping pressure from powerful factions at bay.

In this article, I engage with the normative foundations of David Mitrany's international political theory. My aim is to show that there is more to be found in Mitrany's approach to international organization than the technocratic problem-solving often associated with his name today. To pinpoint the essence of Mitrany's normative thought, I introduce the term 'functional cosmopolitanism'. This variety of cosmopolitan theorizing starts from the equality of individual needs (not from rights or obligations), suggesting that transnational institutions, rather than states, should cater to these needs. An important aim of this 'functional devolution' is to limit and reconfigure public power, thus countering the threat of an ever more powerful nation-state. Mitrany's proposal for introducing a functional dimension into the political system can be interpreted as a 'thin' cosmopolitanism, designed to free citizens from war and oppressive concentrations of political power, but vague in its ideas about individual political engagement.