International institutions have become increasingly important not only in the relations between states, but also for individuals. When are these institutions legitimate? The legitimacy standards for international institutions are predominantly either minimal or democratic and cannot capture the large variety of international institutions. This paper develops an autonomy-based conception of legitimacy based on the justification of political power that is applicable to both international and domestic institutions. Political power as rule-setting is a particular normative threat to the personal and political autonomy of its subjects. The more political power an institution exercises, the more demanding the legitimacy standards it needs to fulfill in order to be legitimate. The paper argues that an increase in the four dimensions of political power (scope, domain sensitivity, applicability, and impact) raises the legitimacy burden for the institution. Finally, graded legitimacy standards are proposed. These are sensitive to the differences between international institutions in respect of their levels of political power, i.e. level of competences. In contrast to minimal or democratic legitimacy standards, the paper suggests that different standards of accountability, participation, and human rights have to be fulfilled according to the institution's level of political power.

specialisation include human rights law (in particular the ECHR), international criminal law (in particular crimes against humanity and genocide), and legal and political theory (in particular human rights theory, democratic theory, and criminal law theory). He is the author of The ECHR and Human Rights Theory published by Routledge in 2016.

In the last seven years, over twenty thousand people have died trying to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Rescue missions by private actors and NGOs have increased because both national measures and measures by the EU’s border control agency, Frontex, are often deemed insufficient. However, such independent rescue missions face increasing persecution from national governments, Italy being one example. This raises the question of how potential migrants and dissenting citizens should act towards the EU border regime. In contrast to the literature, which mainly addresses migration on the basis of justice requirements, this article focuses on the legitimate authority of the EU’s border regime. Focusing on the legitimacy criteria for states’ claims to regulate migration opens a fruitful normative perspective, given the pervasive disagreement over the content of justice in migration. What reasons for compliance and non-interference does legitimacy supply for potential immigrants and dissenting citizens? And what legitimacy standard may be appropriate for the power that individual states claim over potential immigrants? We argue that, even assuming a minimal legitimacy standard for the state-migrant relationship, the structure of the EU’s border regime exhibits unique features, which cause it to stand in tension with such a standard. By coordinating its Member States’ border regimes, especially through Frontex, the EU claims and exercises power over potential immigrants. However, the asymmetrical delegation of state powers to the EU means that the power involved in regulating European borders is, in core respects, unaccountable. This unaccountability, we argue, is significant for the legitimacy of the EU’s border regime. This article sheds new light on the morality of unauthorised rescue missions by assessing the permissibility of resistance to the EU’s border regime.

Union Citizenship as currently implemented in the European Union introduces a distinct concept of citizenship that necessitates an adequate normative approach. The objective of this paper is to assess EU Citizenship against the theoretical background of multilateral democracy. This approach is specifically suited for this task, as it does not rely on a nation-state paradigm or the presumption of a further transformation into a federation or union. We propose three criteria by which to assess multilevel citizenship: equal individual rights, equal sovereignty of peoples, and the balancing of individuals' and peoples' interests. We argue that the current practice of Union Citizenship does not fully meet the proposed standards, regarding equal rights within, and equal access to, the political system. Based on our assessment, we propose reform options of access to national and supranational citizenship, and argue for supranational participation rights and equal transnational rights to gradually re-establish full membership for individuals.

The essays collected in this special issue explore what legitimacy means for actors and institutions that do not function like traditional states but nevertheless wield significant power in the global realm. They are connected by the idea that the specific purposes of non-state actors and the contexts in which they operate shape what it means for them to be legitimate and so shape the standards of justification that they have to meet. In this introduction, we develop this guiding methodology further and show how the special issue's individual contributions apply it to their cases. In the first section, we provide a sketch of our purpose-dependent theory of legitimacy beyond the state. We then highlight two features of the institutional context beyond the state that set it apart from the domestic case: problems of feasibility and the structure of international law.