This thematic issue brings together research from political science and legal history about legitimacy discourses covering different forms of public-private co-regulation and private self-regulation, domestic and transnational, past and present. These forms of governance highlight the important role of non-state actors in exercising public authority. There has been a growing debate about the legitimacy of non-state actors setting and enforcing norms and providing public goods and services. However, the focus of this thematic issue is not on developing abstract criteria of legitimacy. Rather, the authors analyze legitimacy discourses around different cases of privatized or partly privatized forms of governance from the early 20 th century until today. Legitimacy is subject to empirical and not normative analysis. Legitimacy discourses are analyzed in order to shed light on the legitimacy conceptions that actors hold, what they consider as legitimate institutions, and based on what criteria. The particular focus of this thematic issue is to examine whether the significance of democratic legitimacy is decreasing as the importance of regulation exercised by private actors is increasing.

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The chapter investigates the preferences of BRICS and NGOs with regard to the exercise of transnational private authority. Three such governance schemes are selected: the Kimberley Process, the Global Compact, and the Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) certification scheme. Transnational governance schemes are part of the liberal status quo. Yet, preferences of BRICS and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are so diverse that there is rarely joint contestation nor is there an alliance between the two groups of actors. The analysis shows that it is mainly civil society organizations (CSOs) which contest privatized governance schemes. Business-related interest groups are generally supporting such schemes, to little surprise. BRICS also show a remarkable level of support for privatized forms of governance. The clearest differences in preferences exist between CSOs and BRICS: whereas CSOs champion stronger international institutions, the support of BRICS for private governance schemes increases in proportion to the weakness of a given arrangement or to the extent of national discretion it still affords them. In light of BRICS’ and NGOs’ different preferences, on the one hand, and among the members of each of these groups, on the other hand, neither of these two ‘groups’ can be considered close to having a single shared vision of global order. As a result, there is also little potential for strategic cooperation between BRICS and NGOs when it comes to contesting the status quo of transnational private authority.

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