A Theory of Private Authority

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica F. Green
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Contemporary Politics

This chapter describes a theory of private authority, based on the notion of supply and demand, that explains when private authority emerges and why, and whether it is delegated or entrepreneurial. A theory of private authority contributes to larger discussions about institutional design and provides new insights into the mechanisms through which global cooperation might occur. The chapter first explains what authority is and why people obey it. It then defines private authority and examines its major characteristics, including why actors choose to consent to privately created rules. It argues that in contemporary politics expertise is a key engine for legitimacy and thus for consent, because it allows actors to provide benefits to others. The chapter proceeds by exploring delegated authority and entrepreneurial authority. Finally, it develops expectations about when private authority emerges in world politics—and what type of authority will likely develop.

Rethinking Private Authority

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica F. Green
Keyword(s):  
Green Building ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Treaty Implementation

This book examines the role of nonstate actors in global environmental politics, arguing that a fuller understanding of their role requires a new way of conceptualizing private authority. It identifies two distinct forms of private authority—one in which states delegate authority to private actors, and another in which entrepreneurial actors generate their own rules, persuading others to adopt them. Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence spanning a century of environmental rule making, the book shows how the delegation of authority to private actors has played a small but consistent role in multilateral environmental agreements over the past fifty years, largely in the area of treaty implementation. This contrasts with entrepreneurial authority, where most private environmental rules have been created in the past two decades. The book traces how this dynamic and fast-growing form of private authority is becoming increasingly common in areas ranging from organic food to green building practices to sustainable tourism. It persuasively argues that the configuration of state preferences and the existing institutional landscape are paramount to explaining why private authority emerges and assumes the form that it does. In-depth cases on climate change provide evidence for the book's arguments. The book demonstrates that authority in world politics is diffused across multiple levels and diverse actors, and it offers a more complete picture of how private actors are helping to shape our response to today's most pressing environmental problems.

The quest for legitimacy in world politics – international institutions’ legitimation strategies

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Gronau ◽  
Henning Schmidtke
Keyword(s):  
Member State ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
World Politics ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Diffuse Support ◽  
Reliable Basis

AbstractThe article presents a top-down approach to the study of the empirical legitimacy of international institutions. It starts from the observation that international institutions’ representatives are engaged in various strategies aimed at cultivating generalised support. The article asserts that such strategies should be taken into account to gain deeper insights into the legitimation process of international institutions. To systematise these legitimation efforts and facilitate their empirical analysis, the article introduces the concept of legitimation strategies, which are defined as goal-oriented activities employed to establish and maintain a reliable basis of diffuse support. An analytical differentiation between three types of legitimation strategies is introduced depending on the addressees of legitimation strategies, that is, member state governments, international institutions’ staff, and the wider public. The applicability of the concept and the relevance of legitimation strategies for international institutions’ communication, behaviour, and institutional design is demonstrated by an empirical analysis of the G8’s and the IMF’s reaction to legitimation crises in the recent past of both institutions. In addition, the case studies suggest that a balanced set of legitimation strategies that takes into account the legitimacy concerns of all three constituencies is more likely to be successful in improving legitimacy perceptions.

scholarly journals International courts and global democratic values: Participation, accountability, and justification

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan W. Kuyper ◽  
Theresa Squatrito
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Global Democracy ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
National Governments ◽  
Second World

AbstractIn a post-Cold War era characterised by globalisation and deep interdependence, the actions of national governments increasingly have an effect beyond their own territorial borders. Moreover, key agents of global governance – international organisations and their bureaucracies, non-state actors and private agents – exercise pervasive forms of authority. Due to these shifts, it is widely noted that world politics suffers from a democratic deficit. This article contributes to work on global democracy by looking at the role of international courts. Building upon an original dataset covering the 24 international courts in existence since the end of the Second World War, we argue that international courts are able to advance democratic values and shape democratic practices beyond the state. They can do so by fostering equal participation, accountability, and public justification that link individuals directly with sites of transnational authority. We contend that the ability of international courts to promote these values is conditioned by institutional design choices concerning access rules, review powers, and provisions regarding judicial reason-giving. We canvass these design features of different international courts and assess the promises and pitfalls for global democratisation. We conclude by linking our analysis of international courts and global democratisation with debates about the legitimation and politicisation of global governance at large.

scholarly journals Measuring institutional overlap in global governance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoram Z. Haftel ◽  
Tobias Lenz
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Data Set ◽  
International Authority ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
And Performance

AbstractOver the past decade, an increasingly sophisticated literature has sought to capture the nature, sources, and consequences of a novel empirical phenomenon in world politics: the growing complexity of global governance. However, this literature has paid only limited attention to questions of measurement, which is a prerequisite for a more comprehensive understanding of global governance complexity across space and time. In taking a first step in this direction, we make two contributions in the article. First, we propose new quantitative measures that gauge the extent of complexity in global governance, which we conceptualize as the degree to which global governance institutions overlap. Dyadic, weighted, directed-dyadic, and monadic measures enable a multifaceted understanding of this important development in world politics. Second, we illustrate these measures by applying them to an updated version of the most comprehensive data set on the design of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs): the Measure of International Authority (MIA). This allows us to identify cross-sectional and temporal patterns in the extent to which important IGOs, which tend to form the core of sprawling regime complexes in many issue areas, overlap. We conclude by outlining notable implications for, and potential applications of, our measures for research on institutional design and evolution, legitimacy, and legitimation, as well as effectiveness and performance. This discussion underscores the utility of the proposed measures, as both dependent and independent variables, to researchers examining the sources and consequences of institutional overlap in global governance and beyond.

A Parable for our Times: Activism and Terrorism in Anne Fine's Survival Quest, The Road of Bones

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-222
Author(s):  
Yvonne Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Historic Period ◽  
The Road ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Political Governance ◽  
East West

This paper examines representational issues that emerge when Anne Fine's coming of age depiction of an extreme journey based on an historic period of social and political conflict is read as a parable about world politics. The Road of Bones explores, through an adolescent character's struggle to survive State-led terrorism against its subjects, political process, societal upheaval, and the loss of human rights. But if Fine's novel raises issues about political governance in ways that interrogate post 9/11 contemporary politics, the work also raises issues about cultural representation and global audiences when the compromised position of Fine's heroic subject draws upon previously established East/West polarities that privilege a Western readership. In the concluding scenes the protagonist's agentic response may be dually interpreted: is this response to be construed as activism or, more negatively, as a form of terrorism?

Unequal power and the institutional design of global governance: the case of arms control

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE FEHL
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Policy Area ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Institutional Legacies ◽  
Institutional Order

AbstractIR scholars have recently paid increasing attention to unequal institutional orders in world politics, arguing that global governance institutions are deeply shaped by power inequalities among states. Yet, the literature still suffers from conceptual limitations and from a shortage of empirical work. The article addresses these shortcomings through a study of the historical evolution of global arms control institutions since 1945. It shows that in this important policy area, the global institutional order has not been marked by a recent trend toward deeper inequality, as many writings on unequal institutions suggest. Instead, the analysis reveals a pattern of institutional mutation whereby specific forms of institutional inequality are recurrently replaced and supplemented by new forms. This process, the article argues, is driven by states' efforts to adapt the regime to a changing material and normative environment within the constraints of past institutional legacies.

Conclusion

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica F. Green
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Global Environmental Problems ◽  
Multiple Loci ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Rule Making ◽  
Over Time

This book has examined how private rule makers are contributing to the management of global environmental problems by rethinking the meaning of private authority. It has shown that private authority is diffused through and among a diverse set of actors, creating multiple loci for rule-making and governance. It has also distinguished two different types of private authority: delegated authority and entrepreneurial authority. This concluding chapter summarizes the book's findings and considers their theoretical implications—namely, appropriate ways to evaluate the effects of private authority in world politics. It suggests potential contributions of private authority to the climate change regime as it moves forward. Finally, it outlines future avenues for inquiry, situating this study within a much broader set of questions about institutional complexity and density and the effects of private authority over time.

From meditation to action – a research agenda for studying informal global rule-making: remarks on ‘Cosmopolitanism, publicity, and the emergence of a “global administrative law”’

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Oliver Westerwinter
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Institutional Architecture ◽  
Global Law ◽  
Rule Making ◽  
Law Making

Abstract Friedrich Kratochwil engages critically with the emergence of a global administrative law and its consequences for the democratic legitimacy of global governance. While he makes important contributions to our understanding of global governance, he does not sufficiently discuss the differences in the institutional design of new forms of global law-making and their consequences for the effectiveness and legitimacy of global governance. I elaborate on these limitations and outline a comparative research agenda on the emergence, design, and effectiveness of the diverse arrangements that constitute the complex institutional architecture of contemporary global governance.

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