Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Tallberg ◽  
Karin Bäckstrand ◽  
Jan Aart Scholte
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
The Core ◽  
Governance Institutions

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, which engages with the overarching question: whether, why, how, and with what consequences global governance institutions gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy. This introductory chapter explains the rationale of the book, introduces its conceptual framework, reviews existing literature, and presents the key themes of the volume. It emphasizes in particular the volume’s sociological approach to legitimacy in global governance, its comparative scope, and its comprehensive treatment of the topic. Moreover, a specific effort is made to explain how each chapter moves beyond existing research in exploring the book’s three themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) processes of legitimation and delegitimation, and (3) consequences of legitimacy.

scholarly journals Legitimacy in Global Governance

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
The Core ◽  
Governance Institutions

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.

The Intersection of Security and Justice in Global Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Durch ◽  
Joris Larik ◽  
Richard Ponzio
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
International Level ◽  
The Core ◽  
Personal Community

Security and justice are both essential elements in humanity’s quest not only to survive but to thrive with dignity; neither is sustainable alone. Security is merely the appearance of order in a framework of structural violence unless tempered or leavened by concepts of justice that include human rights, human dignity, and other normative limits on the use of power. The pursuit of justice, whether at the personal, community, national, or international level can be crippled if not matched, in turn, by means to sustain security at each level. This complementarity of security and justice—despite their inherent tensions—is the core conceptual framework of the book. Achieving “just security,” we argue, is essential to the success of any global governance enterprise or architecture.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Mason Meier ◽  
Lawrence O. Gostin
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Institutional Dynamics ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
Public Health Challenges ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Governance Institutions

This introductory chapter outlines the global governance institutions that structure the realization of human rights for global health. With this volume examining the relationship between human rights, global governance, and public health, a proliferating set of global governance institutions have developed policies, programs, and practices to operationalize human rights to address public health challenges in a globalizing world. As an institutional analysis that focuses on organizations, the organizations in this volume include those international bureaucracies that bear implementation responsibilities for health-related human rights. Examining institutional dynamics to implement human rights, the contributing authors analyze institutional factors that facilitate or inhibit human rights mainstreaming. This introduction concludes by recognizing the importance of comparative analysis in understanding institutional approaches to human rights in global health, outlining the research methods for studying human rights mainstreaming in global governance institutions and framing a new field of study on rights-based governance for global health advancement.

Introduction—Conflicts of Rights in Theoretical and Comparative Perspective

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stijn Smet
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
European Convention ◽  
The Core ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Winner Take All ◽  
Conflicts Of Rights ◽  
Take All ◽  
Rights Conflicts

This introductory chapter frames the book’s debate by delineating the extent of persistent reasonable disagreement on both the existence and resolution of human rights conflicts in the context of the European Convention on Human Rights. Drawing on the core arguments of the book’s substantive chapters, the introduction highlights the central cleavages in the debate. The chapter first discusses arguments deployed to deny the very existence of conflicts of rights, as well as available counterarguments. It goes on to provide insight in different strategies aimed at minimizing the occurrence of conflicts. It finally suggests that the resolution of genuine human rights conflicts runs along four axes: balancing versus non-balancing; compromise versus winner-take-all; ad hoc balancing versus definitional balancing; and substantive reasoning versus procedural checks. Where useful, the chapter provides linkages to broader scholarly and judicial debates by accentuating relevant theoretical approaches and comparative materials.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Gisela Hirschmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Standard Setting ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Competitive Environment

This introductory chapter highlights why pluralist accountability is an important empirical phenomenon in global governance that needs to be studied systematically. It demonstrates the limits of the existing literature on international organization (IO) accountability, which has focused on traditional, vertical accountability, whereby the implementing actors are held accountable directly by the mandating authority. The chapter introduces the concept of pluralist accountability as standard setting, monitoring, and sanctioning by independent third parties. It presents the argument that a competitive environment that stimulates third parties to act as accountability holders and the vulnerability of implementing actors regarding human rights demands shape the evolution of pluralist accountability. The chapter then outlines the implications of the book’s analysis for current International Relations and international law scholarship on IOs, in particular with regard to complex delegation, the role of nonstate actors and the study of IO legitimacy. It also contains an overview of the subsequent chapters.

Introduction: Appraising the United Nations Human Rights Regime

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alston Philip ◽  
Mégret Frédéric
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
New Instruments

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the UN rights regime, which has changed dramatically in almost every respect. In normative terms, major new instruments have been adopted addressing the situation of persons with disabilities, disappearances, indigenous peoples, and many other groups, and the rights of LGBTI persons are now squarely on the agenda from which they were then almost entirely absent. In terms of staff, the relatively small Center for Human Rights has been replaced by an Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. These dynamics illustrate the extent to which the place of human rights within the broader constellation of global governance is susceptible to constant change. The chapter then considers what is, or should be, involved in the process of evaluating or appraising the effectiveness of the UN human rights regime as a whole and of individual human rights organs.

Introduction: Trumping International Law?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Hongju Koh
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
World War ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Transnational Legal Process

How to resist President Donald Trump’s assault on international law? This introduction sketches the tripartite plan of this book. First, it discusses a counterstrategy of resistance based on transnational legal process. Second, it illustrates that counterstrategy with respect to immigration and refugees, and human rights; the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and trade diplomacy; with countries of concern such as North Korea, Russia, and Ukraine; and with respect to America’s wars: Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Afghanistan, and Syria. Third, it reviews what broader issues are at stake in the looming battle between maintaining the post-World War II framework of Kantian global governance versus shifting to an Orwellian system of authoritarian spheres of influence.

Pluralist Accountability in Global Health Governance

2020 ◽  
pp. 181-205
Author(s):  
Gisela Hirschmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Informal Governance ◽  
The Core

This chapter analyzes the conditions for pluralist accountability regarding public–private health partnerships in the areas of vaccination and vaccine development in India. While in many other fields global governance is still characterized by formal delegation relationships with international organizations as the mandating authorities, global health governance has become very fragmented and consists of primarily informal governance structures. This case study reveals the limitations of pluralist accountability in complex global governance: it demonstrates how the evolution of pluralist accountability was inhibited by both a politicized environment that does not incentivize the exercise of accountability and a moral dilemma situation in which actors adopted a strong counter-norm to render themselves invulnerable against human rights demands. The core question concerning what implementing actors should be held accountable for remains disputed, which thus makes a pluralist accountability relationship impossible.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 2-15
Author(s):  
Simon Chesterman ◽  
Hisashi Owada ◽  
Ben Saul
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Forced Displacement ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Persistent Poverty

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the growing interest in international law in the Asia and Pacific regions, which has been driven by threats as well as opportunities. On the threat side are transnational challenges such as climate change, environmental harms, forced displacement, persistent poverty, human rights violations and international crimes, and terrorism. Meanwhile, opportunities include economic integration, human development, and the proliferation of specialized branches of law as well as dispute settlement mechanisms and institutions. No book has so far covered how Asian and Pacific states as a whole participate in each of the main specialized branches of international law; individually contribute to the making and application of international law on the international plane; and individually implement international law in their national legal systems. This book aims to fill these significant gaps in professional and scholarly knowledge.

Effects of Legitimacy Crises in Complex Global Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fariborz Zelli
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Institutional Complexity ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Institutional Architecture ◽  
Modes Of Governance

This chapter explores the consequences of legitimacy in view of the growing institutional complexity of global governance. Global governance institutions do not operate as autonomous entities, but are entwined in dense patchworks of institutions with partly overlapping and competing mandates. The chapter suggests potential causal consequences of the legitimacy of a global governance institution for the institutional complexity of its issue field. Specifically, the analytical framework set out in the chapter theorizes the consequences of legitimacy crises for three dimensions of institutional complexity: the degree of complexity of the institutional architecture, the effectiveness of the institution within this architecture, and the modes of governance used by the institution to navigate this architecture. The chapter illustrates the potential of this framework with examples relating to climate change, energy, and trade governance.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document