| Item Type |
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
|
| Abstract |
In legitimating themselves, international organizations not only address their member states. They
frequently target civil society organizations, private donors, the wider public, and individual
beneficiaries as well. In this paper, we focus on the latter group and show how international
organizations have increasingly come to invoke “the people” as a reference group for their legitimacy
claims. Conventional explanations would interpret references to “the people” as the response to
societal demands, expressed for instance in increasing levels of politicization of internationalized
authority. Our analysis of legitimation discourses of regional and global international organizations
shows that politicization matters in some cases. Yet, the direct response to public demands is only one
among several paths leading to the adoption of new legitimacy standards. We propose a typology of four different paths to people-based norms and provide illustrations for each path. With this, we
demonstrate that empirically, the rise of people-based norms is more pervasive as well as more diverse than the existing literature tends to assume. Our analysis thus reveals the value-added of more fine-grained analytical tools for the rise of alternative legitimacy norms for international organizations. |
| Authors |
Dingwerth, Klaus & Witt, Antonia |
| Language |
English |
| Subjects |
political science |
| HSG Classification |
contribution to practical use / society |
| HSG Profile Area |
SEPS - Global Democratic Governance |
| Date |
15 September 2021 |
| Event Title |
DVPW-Kongresse 2021 |
| Event Location |
Online |
| Event Dates |
14.-06.09.2021 |
| Depositing User |
Cornelia Kappeler
|
| Date Deposited |
14 Oct 2021 11:29 |
| Last Modified |
20 Jul 2022 17:46 |
| URI: |
https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/publications/264587 |
Four paths instead of one: The rise of people-centred norms in the legitimation of global governance
organizations
