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Abstract
The article offers a description and assessment of the most important discursive strategies used to enhance and justify various models of 'civil-society participation' in international institutions since the late 19th century. It starts from the assumption that the two main rationales for, or concepts of, 'civil-society' participation are functionalism and democratization. The article also notes that, as an offshoot of the democratization rationale, a new empirical and discursive 21st-century trend has partially replaced classic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with so-called 'affected person's organizations' in international institutions. In this context, the article claims that the field of international institutional law is currently witnessing the rise of a principle of participation of 'the most affected'. This shift arguably is an institutional strategy to respond to a profound legitimacy crisis of both international NGOs and the so-called 'global governance' structures shaped over the last 30 years. Against the backdrop of various theoretical approaches to the problem of representation and affectedness in political philosophy and international law, the article critically assesses if, and to what extent, the involvement of 'the most affected' in international organizations can alter the legitimacy resources of international law and its institutions.

Abstract: The article is a historical re-description of international legal debates concerning the ius ad bellum in the Interwar period (1919–1936). Using a core/periphery heuristic, it is demonstrated that the normative changes created by the League Covenant and the Kellogg-Briand Pact were being drafted and interpreted by the great powers in a way that still allowed them to justify military interventions in their peripheries. Even military violence between Western states could only be partially outlawed by these instruments. Legal uncertainties produced during the drafting of the new instruments could readily be exploited by the Western dominated international legal discourse. And yet, with the principle of sovereign equality on the rise in the Interbellum, and the battle of semi-periphery governments against the 'standard of civilisation', traditional justifications for military violence came under increasing pressure. At that very moment, international lawyers in the core introduced a broader understanding of self-defence, gradually replacing former justifications for military interventions both within the core and in the peripheries of Western powers. All of this taken together in practice arguably consumed a substantial part of the alleged 'progress' made by international legal pacifism in the Interbellum.

Abstract
Hans Kelsen and his Vienna School in International Law developed a highly original legal concept of international institutions. It originated in the Interbellum and aimed at bolstering the new institutional structures created in the League era by promoting egalitarian legal structures and strong judicial controls of both member states and the organs of the institution. Against the background of this new approach to international organization, Kelsen, after World War II, developed a first and particularly harsh critique of the UN Charter.

Abstract
This contribution is inspired by the thought-provoking article 'Monopolizing War' by Eyal Benvenisti and Doreen Lustig. My Reply argues that early 19th-century IHL codification projects in the eyes of European governments did not primarily serve domestic anti-revolutionary purposes. It also takes a somewhat sceptical stance as to the recent scholarly trend, which reduces historical explanations for the development of international law to domestic contexts in one or more powerful states involved in the respective law- and policy-making process. Building on the intriguing historical critique of early IHL's 'humanizing substance' developed in 'Monopolizing War' and by referring to more recent IHL codification projects (small arms, nuclear weapons, aerial bombing, autonomous weapons), the second part of the contribution sketches four 'de-humanizing' discursive strategies, which arguably haunt international humanitarian law-making until today: (i) cynical window dressing; (ii) constructing an ontological wall; (iii) utilitarian reasoning; and (iv) excluding the periphery.