Tales of function and form: the discursive legitimation of international technocracy

It has become commonplace to say that, in the past, international governance has been legitimated mainly, if not exclusively, by its welfare-enhancing ‘output’. There has been very little research, however, on the history of legitimating international governance by its output to validate this point. In this essay I begin to address this gap by inquiring into the origins of output-oriented strategies for legitimating international organizations. Scrutinizing the programmatic literature on international organizations from the early 20th century, I illustrate how a new and distinctive account of technocratic legitimation emerged and in the 1920s separated from other types of liberal internationalism. My inquiry, centring on the works of James Arthur Salter, David Mitrany, Paul S. Reinsch and Pitman B. Potter, explores their respective conceptions of ‘good functional governance’, executed by a non-political international technocracy. Their account is explicitly pitched against a notion of ‘international politics’, perceived as violent, polarizing, and irrational. The emergence of such a technocratic legitimation of international governance, I submit, needs to be seen in the context of societal modernization and bureaucratization that unfolded in the first half of the 20th century. I also highlight how in this account the material output of governance is intimately linked to the virtues of the organizational form that brings it about

The Power of Rational Discourse and the Legitimacy of International Governance

governance; legitimacy; participation

Legitimacy and activities of civil society organizations

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) play an active and noteworthy role in governance, both at the national and international level. Three questions arise: First, how do CSOs exercise their advocacy, what repertoires, strategies and resources do they use? Second, to what degree are they legitimized to do so? Third, are there systematic differences between member and non-member CSOs, respectively between policy fields? Based on a survey of 60 exemplary CSOs covering four distinct international-level policy making fora, we will inquire into these questions. The central finding is that membership CSOs neither differ substantially from non-member CSOs in their roles and strategies of dealing with International Organizations, nor do they differ in other aspects of legitimacy, such as transparency or inclusion of beneficiaries. There are no systematic patterns in CSOs properties or behavior which correspond to policy fields. -- Zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen (ZGO) spielen im modernen Regieren eine wichtige Rolle, sowohl im Staat als auch auf internationaler Ebene. Drei Forschungsfragen stehen im Mittelpunkt dieses Papiers: Erstens, wie genau nehmen ZGO am Regierungsprozess teil und welche Einflussstrategien, Ressourcen und Handlungsrepertoire nutzen sie dabei? Zweitens, wie steht es um die Legitimation dieser Organisationen und ihrer Aktivitäten? Drittens, verhalten sich ZGO mit zahlreichen Mitgliedern systematisch anders als ZGO ohne Mitgliedschaft? Gestützt auf Daten von 60 transnationalen ZGO aus vier verschiedenen Politikfeldern gehen wir diesen Fragen nach. Zentrales Ergebnis ist, dass ZGO mit breiter Mitgliedschaft sich in ihren Rollenverständnis und ihren Einflussstrategien nicht grundlegend von anderen unterscheiden. Auch im Hinblick auf wichtige Aspekte ihrer Legitimität, wie etwa Transparenz oder Einbindung von Regelungsadressaten, gibt es keine auffälligen Unterschiede. Die Politikfelder, in denen ZGO aktiv sind, haben ebenfalls keinen messbaren Einfluss auf ihr Handlungsrepertoire und ihre politischen Strategien.

Civil society participation in international governance: the UN and the WTO compared

Civil society participation has become a buzzword in the debate about the legitimacy and accountability of international governance. Many organizations, prominently among them the World Trade Organization (WTO), have come under considerable pressure to open up their policy-making process towards non-state actors. Although the WTO has become more transparent in recent years, direct stakeholder access to its policy making is still denied. This situation is often contrasted with that at the United Nations (UN), where there is (allegedly) much more formally regulated and more substantial participation of civil society. In this paper, we compare the patterns of participation in these two organizations and seek to identify some common dynamics. We present a general framework for analysis based on a model of the policy cycle that allows us to distinguish 'push' and 'pull' factors that determine cooperation in different phases of policy making. In our empirical study, we find that in the WTO, there are few incentives for the organization itself to pull civil society actors into its policy-making process. Agendasetting is the task of governments; research and analysis is delivered by the Secretariat; compliance control is undertaken jointly by the organization and its members. To push the door to trade policy making open, civil society can only rely on public shaming, that is, threatening to undermine the organization's legitimacy as it violates widely accepted standards of good governance. In the UN system, there is in fact more cooperation, but it remains largely limited to the policy phases of agenda-setting, research and analysis and compliance control. Quite like the WTO, the UN protects an intergovernmental core of policy making in which cooperation with civil society remains at the discretion of state parties. Evidence for this are informal and ad hoc ways of collaboration and a lack of participatory rights for non-state actors in the Security Council and the General Assembly. We conclude that studying civil society participation in international public organizations through the lens of the policy cycle can give us a fine-grained picture of cooperative arrangements and enables us to identify potentials for cooperation as well as exclusion. Yet, we also observed two other factors at work that were not really grasped by the model of the policy cycle. First, the institutional culture of organizations can be more or less amenable to civil society. Second, organizations are susceptible to campaigns for 'good governance' that invoke standards of due process and may open the door to nonstate actors. --

The 30 GHz communications satellite low noise receiver

A Ka-band low noise front end in proof of concept (POC) model form for ultimate spaceborne communications receiver deployment was developed. The low noise receiver consists of a 27.5 to 30.0 GHz image enhanced mixer integrated with a 3.7 to 6.2 GHz FET low noise IF amplifier and driven by a self contained 23.8 GHz phase locked local oscillator source. The measured level of receiver performance over the 27.3 to 30.0 GHz RF/3.7 to 6.2 GHz IF band includes 5.5 to 6.5 dB (typ) SSB noise figure, 20.5 + or - 1.5 dB conversion gain and +23 dBm minimum third order two tone intermodulation output intercept point

Learning to love the technocrats again: why the world needs expertise now more than ever

The last few decades have seen intense scrutiny of the role of experts in policymaking. Yet issues like climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic appear impossible to address without following scientific expertise. Jens Steffek argues humanity has little choice but to empower expert-led international organisations to tackle the challenges of the future

Chapter 15 Praxis, Humanism and the Quest for Wholeness

The digital pdf of Chapter 15 is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This collection brings together leading figures in the study of international relations to explore praxis as a perspective on international politics and law. With its focus on competent judgments, the praxis approach holds the promise to overcome the divide between knowing and acting that marks positivist international relations theory. Building on the transdisciplinary work of Friedrich Kratochwil, this book reveals the scope, limits and blind spots of praxis theorizing

Thinking holistically about procedural justice in alternative dispute resolution: a case study of the German Federal Ombud Scheme

This paper examines data collected from users of the German Federal Ombud Scheme. The data was collected as part of a research project to understand how the German Federal Ombud Scheme operates in practice and how its procedures and outcomes are accepted by its users. We begin from the premise that experience of procedural justice during this alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process will build institutional legitimacy, and the paper makes three contributions to the literature on procedural justice. First, we extend evidence of the link between procedural justice and legitimacy to a novel institutional context that is different in many ways to the criminal justice focus of much of the extant literature. Second, we consider the motivations of service users to engage with ADR as potential moderators of that link. Third, we analyse the relationship between procedural justice, subjective outcomes, and the actual outcomes provided to service users. Overall, we conclude that the link between procedural justice and legitimacy can be identified among those with very different motivations for using the German Federal Ombud Scheme

Chapter 1 Introduction

The digital pdf of Chapter 1 is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This collection brings together leading figures in the study of international relations to explore praxis as a perspective on international politics and law. With its focus on competent judgments, the praxis approach holds the promise to overcome the divide between knowing and acting that marks positivist international relations theory. Building on the transdisciplinary work of Friedrich Kratochwil, this book reveals the scope, limits and blind spots of praxis theorizing