Fragile, Contingent, and Nominal: Making Sense of the Rise (and Fall) of Democratic Legitimation in Global Governance

In this paper, I compare and reflect upon the role democratic norms
have come to play in the legitimation of global governance institutions.
Descriptively, I argue that democratic norms have been on the rise. Yet the dynamics that have given rise to democratic norms as well as the roles these norms have come to play differ significantly across these two realms of global governance.
While the democratic narrative has steadily gained centrality in the justification of intergovernmental organizations and their activities, it has initially been strong in transnational governance, as well, but receded to the background in recent years.
In the second part of the paper, I draw on contemporary social theorzing to reflect upon the context-sensitive rise (and fall) of a democratic legitimation narrative in global governance. I argue that the rise of democratic legitimation norms we can observe is episodic rather than linear, precarious rather than stable and reformist
rather than radical. In normative terms, then, the ‘social order of justification’ to which the norm changes I sketch in this contribution gives rise oscillates somewhat uncomfortably between democratic potential and post-democratic practice.