Untapped potential: How the G20 can strengthen global governance

The G20 has two distinctive features that make it a unique forum in global politics. First, it is one of the few existing global platforms where different international institutions and regional organisations can coordinate across a vast array of issue areas and emergent policy fields. Second, it is an institution that brings together heads of government which control roughly 80% of world GDP. Despite these features, the G20 lacks constitutive authority of its own, bound by a consensus principle which sharply delimits its scope of action. Notwithstanding its circumspect authority, no recent international body has garnered more attention from transnational civil society groups and advocacy networks than the G20. Most of this attention is critical and points to legitimacy problems. We argue that these legitimacy problems derive from a perception of untapped potential and undue privilege for great powers. Against this backdrop, we submit that a more active and institutionalised forum – with clear decision-making procedures for exercising authority – could help mitigate resistance and contribute to a more legitimate global governance system overall

Authority, politicization, and alternative justifications: endogenous legitimation dynamics in global economic governance

Recent mobilization against core tenets of the liberal international order suggests that international institutions lack sufficient societal legitimacy. We argue that these contestations are part of a legitimation dynamic that is endogenous to the political authority of international institutions. We specify a mechanism in which international authority increases the likelihood for the public politicization of international institutions. This undermines legitimacy in the short run, but also allows broadening the justificatory basis of global governance: Politicization allows civil society organizations (CSOs) to transmit alternative legitimation standards to global elite discourses. We trace this sequence for four key institutions of global economic governance – the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and the NAFTA – combining data on authority and protest counts with markers for CSOs and legitimation narratives in more than 120,000 articles in international elite newspapers during 1992–2012. The uncovered patterns are consistent with a perspective that understands legitimation dynamics as an endogenous feature of international authority, but they also show that alternative legitimation narratives did not lastingly resonate in the global discourse thus far. This may explain current backlashes and calls for active re-legitimation efforts on part of international institutions themselves

Democratic Governance Beyond the Nation State?

If the EU were to apply for membership in the EU, it would not qualify because of the inadequate democratic content of its constitution. Nevertheless, a good 50 percent of the acts passed in France today are in fact merely the implementation of measures decided upon in the opaque labyrinth of institutions in far-away Brussels, so, is France still democratically governed? The picture is similar with respect to other international institutions in the OECD world. The WTO system of agreements, for instance, comprises almost 10 000 pages and is the result of marathon negotiations lasting over a decade and in which over 150 states and thousands of experts participated. Although these agreements contain far-reaching implications for employees in crisis-prone industrial sectors and in agriculture, the German government is generally almost overzealous in implementing the demands stipulated in the agreements. Did German citizens really have a recognizable influence on these decisions? The problem is clear. Although security and social welfare, two important aims of governance, can be better achieved with international institutions than without them, the mere existence of international institutions is no guarantee of good governance. Apart from producing effective solutions to problems within the fields of security and welfare, governance must also fulfil certain procedural requirements in order to be rated as good. From the point of view of democratic theory, however, international institutions have very shaky foundations. Against this background, Robert Dahl (1994) pointed almost paradigmatically to a fundamental dilemma of politics in the age of globalization: the contradiction between "system effectiveness and citizen participation." This paper aims at questioning the notion of a contradiction between – to use the terms of Fritz Scharpf (1997b) – output legitimacy (acceptance created by system effectiveness) and input legitimacy (acceptance created by democratic procedures). I shall first argue that viewing the problem as a choice between "effective problem-solving through international institutions" and "democractic political processes" is already in normative terms a false approach (Section 1). International institutions not only increase system effectiveness or output-legitimacy, but are also a normatively sensible response to the problems for democracy that are caused by globalization. At the same time, it is indisputable that the actual functioning of these international institutions does not meet democratic standards. In Section 2 I present the skeptical argument that most deficits in the working of international institutions cannot easily be remedied, since democratic majority decisions depend – in descriptive terms – on a political community that is based on trust and solidarity. Although other forms of transnational interest aggregation, such as intergovernmental bargaining and arguing among transnational epistemic communities may exist, the lack of a transnational demos combined with the existence of transnational social spaces poses a problem that cannot easily be overcome. Skeptics therefore see a structural dilemma that cannot be reconciled by democratizing international institutions; to a certain extent they are necessary for effective policies, but they are structurally undemocratic. The skeptical argument is founded on two more or less explicit background hypotheses that can be empirically challenged. The first background hypothesis states that a demos cannot exist at the transnational level. In Section 3, I will modify this statement in theoretical terms and offer some conceptual distinctions that may prepare the ground for further empirical investigation. The second background hypothesis of the skeptics postulates a zero-sum relationship between national sovereignty and supranationality. Thus, any institutional solution between the poles of nation-state sovereignty and supranational statehood, be it the EU or a world state, will necessarily encroach on both system effectiveness and democratic legitimation. Against this background I shall in Section 4 make some concrete institutional proposals that undermine the zero-sum logic of the skeptics, concluding that in a denationalized society, democratic legitimation can only be achieved by a mixed constitution comprising majority procedures and negotiation mechanisms. The problems and issues discussed in this paper have emerged in different contexts, most prominently in the debate on the democratic deficit of the EU. The EU is a special case since it represents a new type of political system, made up of national and European institutions which are constituted in relation to each other. West European national institutions and the EU institutions are so closely interwoven that they can no longer be conceived as separate political systems (see Jachtenfuchs/Kohler-Koch 1996; Marks et al. 1996). This multi-level system of the EU has two distinct features that seperate it from other international institutions. First, the regulations issued in the different European sectors (European regimes, if you wish) are so closely related to each other that as a network they affect a number of political issue areas at once within a more or less clearly defined territory. This justifies the use of the terms European Community and multi-level system. In contrast, issue-specific international institutions such as international regimes are more functional, and the sum of any number of international regimes does not cover a recognizable territorial space. Here, the term multi-level politics (for each specific institution) is more appropriate. The second distinctive feature of the EU multi-level system is that in contrast to international regimes, which are by and large passive, some European institutions, such as the European Court of Justice and the European Commission, are indeed supranational in that they have authoritative powers which directly affect national administrations and societies. In spite of these far-reaching differences, the thrust of this paper applies to both international institutions in general and the European Union in particular. Where specific steps in the argumentation refer to one or the other type of institution I shall qualify my statements accordingly

From constitutional rule to loosely coupled spheres of liquid authority: a reflexive approach

This article develops a reason-based social foundation of new forms of authority, which often are liquid and sectorally limited. The recognition of authority hinges, in this view, on reflexive actors who are aware of their own limits of rationality regarding the lack of either information or a perspective that allows for the pursuit of common goods. In such a reflexive concept of authority, authority takers tend to monitor the authorities closely, and the internalization of the subordinate role is not a necessary part of it. Reflexive authority is embedded in the acceptance of a knowledge order that reproduces the authority relationship. In spite of a tendency toward institutionalization, reflexive authority often comes in a liquid state of aggregation, and almost always with a restricted functional scope. Moreover, this new set-up of authority creates social dynamics that add to liquidity. First, the encompassing constitutionalized rule with majoritarian decision making as major source of legitimacy is increasingly undermined by loosely coupled spheres of specialized authorities, which are most often justified on the basis of expertise. We can observe both the rise of international authorities in the absence of coordination between them, and the rise of similar authorities within the nation state that escape control of the democratic core institutions. As a result, authority gets fragmented and different authorities need to adjust to each other. The second implication of the argument is that democratic legitimation narratives become rare, leading to an ongoing legitimatory contestation of authorities. Both these processes make authority even more liquid

Unravelling multi-level governance systems

One of the most important features of the multi-level governance research programme is the parallel conceptualisation of the vertical and the horizontal relationships within multi-level governance systems. Different systems of multi-level governance are characterised by the relationships between political institutions on the same level (Are there many task-specific organisations?) and by the relationship between different levels (On which level do we see political communities?). By conceptualising scale and community in a substitutive way as Hooghe and Marks in tendency do, some of the potentials are lost. I put forward the suggestion that treating the two dimensions as independent would allow for an even fuller picture of the dynamics of politics in multi-level governance systems

Untapped potential: How the G20 can strengthen global governance

The G20 has two distinctive features that make it a unique forum in global politics. First, it is one of the few existing global platforms where different international institutions and regional organisations can coordinate across a vast array of issue areas and emergent policy fields. Second, it is an institution that brings together heads of government which control roughly 80\% of world GDP. Despite these features, the G20 lacks constitutive authority of its own, bound by a consensus principle which sharply delimits its scope of action. Notwithstanding its circumspect authority, no recent international body has garnered more attention from transnational civil society groups and advocacy networks than the G20. Most of this attention is critical and points to legitimacy problems. We argue that these legitimacy problems derive from a perception of untapped potential and undue privilege for great powers. Against this backdrop, we submit that a more active and institutionalised forum - with clear decision-making procedures for exercising authority - could help mitigate resistance and contribute to a more legitimate global governance system overall

How Non-Majoritarian Institutions Make Silent Majorities Vocal: A Political Explanation of Authoritarian Populism

Why did we witness such a strong growth of anti-liberal forces twenty-five years after the triumph of liberalism? The answer is twofold. First, authoritarian populism has not sneaked into a given political space but is co-constitutive of a new cleavage in most modern societies. Authoritarian populists speak to the issues of this cleavage. Second, the rise of this new cleavage and authoritarian populists cannot be reduced to one of the two well-known explanations, namely the economic insecurity perspective and cultural backlash perspective. This current paper develops a political explanation that integrates struggles over policies with a focus on endogenous dynamics of political institutions in and beyond democracies. In this account, it is the historical compromise between labor and capital that has triggered a dynamic in which the rise of so-called non-majoritarian institutions (NMIs)—such as central banks, constitutional courts, and international organizations (IOs)—have locked in liberal policies in most consolidated democracies. This explanation brings together the party cartelization thesis with the observation that NMIs are a major target of contemporary populism. The explanatory model is probed by translating it into descriptive propositions and by showing step by step how the sequence unfolded in electoral democracies

Politicization compared: at national, European, and global levels

The current literature on politicization can be separated into three groups: politicization within national political systems, of the EU, and of international institutions. In spite of speaking about a similar phenomenon based on a common definition, these three strands of literature do not interact with each other and display, beyond the definitional consensus, significant differences. The focus on different political levels also leads to various assessments. This contribution compares these three strands of literature with the goal of showing that it is necessary to simultaneously look at all three levels to understand the dynamics of politicization and de-politicization. There is a significant potential of analyzing different (de-)politicization processes in an integrative framework to provide fresh insights for each of the fields. In fact, some of the differences between the three kinds of literature can be resolved only by looking at the three levels in parallel

Transformations of the state?

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Compliance in Comparative Perspective : The EU and Other International Institutions

Although there are different notions of what legal norms sets apart from social norms, all concepts of law adhere to the principle of legal equality, according to which like cases are treated alike. Law thus requires that like cases are treated in a like manner. This, in turn, requires a high compliance rate with any given regulation. Without sufficient compliance rates, it is hardly possible to speak of law. But can a high degree of compliance be realized beyond the coercive capacities of the nation-state? The sceptical formulation of Herbert Kelsen (1966: 4) is famous: "The antagonism of freedom and coercion fundamental to social life supplies the decisive criterion. It is the criterion of law, for law is a coercive order." This point of view is also reflected in Realism as a theory of international relations (Morgenthau 1964, Waltz 1979). For Realism, legal constraints beyond the nation-state are non-existent or, at best, very weak (e.g. Krasner 1999 on human rights). Furthermore, communitarianists point out that questions of law and justice can meaningfully be dealt with only in communities that share common values and ideas (Goodin 1988, Miller 1995) and are equally doubtful about the possibility for law beyond the nation-state. In this sense, it seems fair to describe the question of compliance as the Achilles" heel of international regulations (see Werksmann 1996: xvi, Young 1999a: Chap. 4). This paper aims to shed doubt on the scepticism of Realism and Communitarianism. As opposed to the propositions of both theoretical strands we show that law beyond the nation-state is indeed possible and that compliance can even in a horizontal setting without centralized coercive capacities and without a single underlying social identity work sufficiently well. We furthermore show some of the building blocks of a successful elicitation of compliance beyond the nation-state and discuss if and in how far the EU is different from other international institutions in realising them. For developing this argument we start by introducing our research design and case selection (section 2). Section 3 introduces our empirical results, discusses their relevance for the analysis of compliance and draws some theoretical implications. This section is followed by a discussion of the relevance of the results for the study of European integration (section 4)