Explaining elite perceptions of legitimacy in global governance

This article undertakes an empirical investigation of the relationship between structural inequalities and legitimacy beliefs in global governance. Normative theory often emphasises inequality as a major source of injustice in global politics, but we lack empirical research that examines the implications of inequality for legitimacy in concrete situations of global governance. This paper draws on large mixed-method survey evidence regarding inequality perceptions and legitimacy beliefs at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a key site of global Internet governance that has given particular priority to issues of diversity and inclusion. Our analysis arrives at four main findings. First, participants in ICANN do perceive substantial structural power asymmetries and often find them to be problematic. Second, persons on the perceived subordinate side of these power stratifications tend to observe larger inequalities and to find them more problematic than persons on the perceived dominant side. However, third, these perceptions and concerns about inequality almost never associate with legitimacy beliefs towards ICANN, even among people in structurally subordinated positions and among people who express the greatest worries regarding power inequalities. Fourth, in forming legitimacy perceptions, participants at ICANN generally prioritise other aspects of institutional purpose, procedure and performance, unconnected with inequality. This lack of a relationship between perceptions of inequality and legitimacy beliefs suggests that, however sympathetic policy elites at ICANN might be towards greater equality in principle, they are unlikely to give it precedence in practice.

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“… 4 For further discussion of the confidence measure, see Dellmuth et al (2022); Verhaegen et al (2021). …”

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confidence: 99%

Inequality and legitimacy in global governance: an empirical study

Jongen

Scholte

2022

European Journal of International Relations

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“…The study also contributes to a growing literature on the perceived legitimacy of global governance (Dellmuth, 2018;Dellmuth et al, 2022;Tallberg et al, 2018;Tallberg & Zürn, 2019;Verhaegen et al, 2021), which for the moment has not focused on enforcement actions sufficiently.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Avoiding Public Backlash: Enforcing Rule of Law in the European Union

Toshkov¹,

Mazepus²,

Yordanova³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Effective enforcement is essential for international cooperation. Accordingly, the European Union (EU) has developed a number of formal tools for enforcing its laws and policies in the members states. The application of these tools, however, has been slow, timid and uneven. One of the possible reasons for this is the fear that enforcement by supranational institutions (the Commission and the Court of Justice of the EU) will provoke public backlash in the member states targeted by sanctions. Systematic empirical evidence for such effects of enforcement is, however, lacking. This paper develops hypotheses about the factors affecting the perceived legitimacy of enforcement actions. The hypotheses capture the possible influence of procedural fairness, descriptive norm prevalence, and the likely effects of the sanctions on the future of the EU. These hypotheses are tested with a survey experimental design administered to a nationally-representative sample (N=1,200) in Poland. The context of the study is the enforcement of rule of law, and the focus is on the substantial financial sanctions imposed by the EU with regard to judicial independence in particular. The results show that the perceived legitimacy of the enforcement actions is strongly related to exclusive national identity, the perceived importance of the rule of law as a norm, and partisan affiliations. We find some evidence that providing information about the prevalence of public support for judicial independence in the country increases significantly the perceived legitimacy of enforcement actions. No evidence is found about possible effects of information about Polexit, future deterrence effects of the sanctions or their procedural fairness or unfairness. Altogether, these results suggest that the perceived legitimacy of enforcement actions is very hard to be influenced when the issue at stake is relatively salient and politicized.

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“…First, they provide broader historical context in which to judge the role of legitimacy for the potential crisis of the current liberal world order (e.g., Bo ¨rzel and Zu ¨rn, 2021; Lake et al, 2021) or the death and decline of IOs (von Borzyskowski and Vabulas, 2019;Debre and Dijkstra, 2021;Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, 2020. Our time series, which covers ongoing developments as well as previous periods of legitimacy crises, supplements recent cross-sectional and experimental analyses on the legitimacy of IOs (e.g., Anderson et al, 2019;Dellmuth et al, 2019;Verhaegen et al, 2021, Dellmuth et al, 2022.…”

Section: Implications For Research and Practicementioning

confidence: 92%

Global Legitimacy Crises

Sommerer

Agné

Zelli

et al. 2022

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This book addresses the consequences of legitimacy in global governance, in particular asking: when and how do legitimacy crises affect international organizations (IOs) and their capacity to rule. The book starts with a new conceptualization of legitimacy crisis that looks at public challenges from a variety of actors. Based on this conceptualization, it applies a mixed-methods approach to identify and examine legitimacy crises, starting with a quantitative analysis of mass media data on challenges of a sample of 32 IOs. It shows that some, but not all organizations have experienced legitimacy crises, spread over several decades from 1985 to 2020. Following this, the book presents a qualitative study to further examine legitimacy crises of two selected case studies: the WTO and the UNFCCC. Whereas earlier research assumed that legitimacy crises have negative consequences, the book introduces a theoretical framework that privileges the activation inherent in a legitimacy crisis. It holds that this activation may not only harm an IO, but could also strengthen it, in terms of its material, institutional, and decision-making capacity. The following statistical analysis shows that whether a crisis has predominantly negative or positive effects depends on a variety of factors. These include the specific audience whose challenges define a certain crisis, and several institutional properties of the targeted organization. The ensuing in-depth analysis of the WTO and the UNFCCC further reveals how legitimacy crises and both positive and negative consequences are interlinked, and that effects of crises are sometimes even visible beyond the organizational borders.

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Explaining elite perceptions of legitimacy in global governance

Cited by 30 publications

References 103 publications

Inequality and legitimacy in global governance: an empirical study

Inequality and legitimacy in global governance: an empirical study

Avoiding Public Backlash: Enforcing Rule of Law in the European Union

Global Legitimacy Crises

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