The Legitimacy of International Organizations

The Legitimacy of International Organizations
Author: Jean-Marc Coicaud
Publisher:
Total Pages: 600
Release: 2001
Genre: Law
ISBN:

The end of the Cold War is only one in a series of events that have radically modified the operational environment of international organizations since their establishment. These changes, many of which have lately been discussed under the term "globalization," include: decolonization; growing awareness of the global nature of many economic, environmental, and public health problems; multiplication of non-governmental organizations; globalization of mass media and the market; rapid developments in the field of biotechnology; and the emergence of new information technologies, particularly the Internet. These developments suggest that the time has come to take a fresh look at the philosophy of international organization. The Legitimacy of International Organizations presents the results of an interdisciplinary research project of the Peace and Governance Programme of the United Nations University. The authors are prominent experts in the fields of social and political philosophy, law, political science, economics, and environmental studies.

Constituent Power and the Legitimacy of International Organizations

Constituent Power and the Legitimacy of International Organizations
Author: John G. Oates
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2020-02-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000028372

This book develops a constitutional theory of international organization to explain the legitimation of supranational organizations. Supranational organizations play a key role in contemporary global governance, but recent events like Brexit and the threat by South Africa to withdraw from the International Criminal Court suggest that their legitimacy continues to generate contentious debates in many countries. Rethinking international organization as a constitutional problem, Oates argues that it is the representation of the constituent power of a constitutional order, that is, the collective subject in whose name authority is wielded, which explains the legitimation of supranational authority. Comparing the cases of the European Union, the World Trade Organization, and the International Criminal Court, Oates shows that the constitution of supranationalism is far from a functional response to the pressures of interdependence but a value-laden struggle to define the proper subject of global governance. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of international organization and those working in the broader fields of global governance and general International Relations theory. It should also be of interest to international legal scholars, particularly those focused on questions related to global constitutionalism.

Rules for the World

Rules for the World
Author: Michael Barnett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2012-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801465109

Rules for the World provides an innovative perspective on the behavior of international organizations and their effects on global politics. Arguing against the conventional wisdom that these bodies are little more than instruments of states, Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore begin with the fundamental insight that international organizations are bureaucracies that have authority to make rules and so exercise power. At the same time, Barnett and Finnemore maintain, such bureaucracies can become obsessed with their own rules, producing unresponsive, inefficient, and self-defeating outcomes. Authority thus gives international organizations autonomy and allows them to evolve and expand in ways unintended by their creators. Barnett and Finnemore reinterpret three areas of activity that have prompted extensive policy debate: the use of expertise by the IMF to expand its intrusion into national economies; the redefinition of the category "refugees" and decision to repatriate by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and the UN Secretariat's failure to recommend an intervention during the first weeks of the Rwandan genocide. By providing theoretical foundations for treating these organizations as autonomous actors in their own right, Rules for the World contributes greatly to our understanding of global politics and global governance.

Legitimacy in International Law

Legitimacy in International Law
Author: Rüdiger Wolfrum
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2008-02-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3540777644

There has been intense debate in recent times over the legitimacy or otherwise of international law. This book contains fresh perspectives on these questions, offered at an international and interdisciplinary conference hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Law and International Law. At issue are questions including, for example, whether international law lacks legitimacy in general and whether international law or a part of it has yielded to the facts of power.

The Working World of International Organizations

The Working World of International Organizations
Author: Yi-Chong Xu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2018
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0198719493

This volume examines the actions and decisions of International Organizations (IOs), and through a comparative study of six IOs examines how their structures, rules, and norms shape the choice-selections of players.

Legitimacy in Global Governance

Legitimacy in Global Governance
Author: Jonas Tallberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2018-09-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019256160X

Legitimacy is central for the capacity of global governance institutions to address problems such as climate change, trade protectionism, and human rights abuses. However, despite legitimacy's importance for global governance, its workings remain poorly understood. That is the core concern of this volume: to develop an agenda for systematic and comparative research on legitimacy in global governance. In complementary fashion, the chapters address different aspects of the overarching question: whether, why, how, and with what consequences global governance institutions gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy? The volume makes four specific contributions. First, it argues for a sociological approach to legitimacy, centered on perceptions of legitimate global governance among affected audiences. Second, it moves beyond the traditional focus on states as the principal audience for legitimacy in global governance and considers a full spectrum of actors from governments to citizens. Third, it advocates a comparative approach to the study of legitimacy in global governance, and suggests strategies for comparison across institutions, issue areas, countries, societal groups, and time. Fourth, the volume offers the most comprehensive treatment so far of the sociological legitimacy of global governance, covering three broad analytical themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) processes of legitimation and delegitimation, and (3) consequences of legitimacy.

A Theory of Global Governance

A Theory of Global Governance
Author: Michael Zürn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2018-03-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0192551809

This book offers a major new theory of global governance, explaining both its rise and what many see as its current crisis. The author suggests that world politics is now embedded in a normative and institutional structure dominated by hierarchies and power inequalities and therefore inherently creates contestation, resistance, and distributional struggles. Within an ambitious and systematic new conceptual framework, the theory makes four key contributions. Firstly, it reconstructs global governance as a political system which builds on normative principles and reflexive authorities. Second, it identifies the central legitimation problems of the global governance system with a constitutionalist setting in mind. Third, it explains the rise of state and societal contestation by identifying key endogenous dynamics and probing the causal mechanisms that produced them. Finally, it identifies the conditions under which struggles in the global governance system lead to decline or deepening. Rich with propositions, insights, and evidence, the book promises to be the most important and comprehensive theoretical argument about world politics of the 21st century.

To Reform the World

To Reform the World
Author: Guy Fiti Sinclair
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198757964

This book explores how international organizations (IOs) have expanded their powers over time without formally amending their founding treaties. IOs intervene in military, financial, economic, political, social, and cultural affairs, and increasingly take on roles not explicitly assigned to them by law. Sinclair contends that this 'mission creep' has allowed IOs to intervene internationally in a way that has allowed them to recast institutions within and interactions among states, societies, and peoples on a broadly Western, liberal model. Adopting a historical and interdisciplinary, socio-legal approach, Sinclair supports this claim through detailed investigations of historical episodes involving three very different organizations: the International Labour Organization in the interwar period; the United Nations in the two decades following the Second World War; and the World Bank from the 1950s through to the 1990s. The book draws on a wide range of original institutional and archival materials, bringing to light little-known aspects of each organization's activities, identifying continuities in the ideas and practices of international governance across the twentieth century, and speaking to a range of pressing theoretical questions in present-day international law and international relations.

Legitimating International Organizations

Legitimating International Organizations
Author: Dominik Zaum
Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2013-09-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199672091

The importance of legitimacy is widely recognised in the literature on international and regional organizations, not least for compliance with their decisions. How such organizations claim and sustain their legitimacy, however, has been insufficiently analysed and understood. Through a range of conceptual chapters and case studies, this volume examines the legitimation practices of international and regional organizations. It examines how internationalorganizations justify and communicate their legitimacy claims, and how these practices differ between organizations. It also considers the implications of this analysis for global and regional governance.

Responsibility of International Organizations

Responsibility of International Organizations
Author: Maurizio Ragazzi
Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9004256083

In December 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Law Commission's articles on the responsibility of international organizations, bringing to conclusion not only nearly ten years of reflection by the Commission, governments and organizations on this specific topic, but also decades of study of the wider subject of international responsibility, which had initially focused on State responsibility. Parallel to this reflection by the Commission, diplomats and public officials, the body of international case-law and literature on the many facets of the topic has steadily been growing. Responsibility of International Organizations: Essays in Memory of Sir Ian Brownlie contributes to the body of international literature by collecting a broad spectrum of different and sometimes differing perspectives from well-known experts in the field, ranging from the bench to the Commission, academia, and the world of in-house counsel. The book is also a memorial to the renowned Sir Ian Brownlie, himself a former Chairman of the International Law Commission who, as a leading scholar and practitioner, greatly contributed to the reflection on international responsibility, including the responsibility of international organizations. Edited by Maurizio Ragazzi, a former pupil of Sir Ian, the book is an ideal companion to International Responsibility Today, a collection of essays on international responsibility which the same editor presented in 2005 in memory of Oscar Schachter, and to which Sir Ian Brownlie had contributed. The essays collected in Responsibility of International Organizations: Essays in Memory of Sir Ian Brownlie, conveniently grouped by the editor under broad areas for the reader's benefit, will be relevant not only to all those interested in this specific subject but also, more generally, to all those engaged in the field of international law and the law of international organizations.