New perspectives on the legitimacy of international institutions and power

IF 1.1 3区 哲学 Q3 ETHICS
Gordon Arlen, Antoinette Scherz, Martin Vestergren
{"title":"New perspectives on the legitimacy of international institutions and power","authors":"Gordon Arlen, Antoinette Scherz, Martin Vestergren","doi":"10.1111/josp.12554","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>In democracies around the world, political forces calling for a rollback of globalization are on the ascendancy. Longstanding consensus about the benefits of free trade and human rights and around the legitimacy of the international institutions enabling these goods has been questioned by successful populist politicians on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Some even claim that the entire liberal international order has become contested, perhaps as never before (Lake et al., <span>2021</span>). An emerging critique of multilateralism argues that states and peoples should not be shackled by international legal arrangements and international law, but rather, that states should “do it alone.” The picture painted is one where state sovereignty is constrained and undermined by international institutions. This view implies that there is necessarily a tradeoff between multilateralism and state autonomy.</p>\n<p>Yet, in our globalized world, the relationship between state autonomy and international legal institutions is more complex than both critics and some defenders of the international order acknowledge. Though states frequently find themselves under pressure to join international legal institutions, this is often because there are good reasons to do so. In a globalized world, membership in these institutions is often crucial for states to function properly, serving their citizens domestically, while also cultivating productive relationships with other states. Therefore, international institutions may contribute to the construction of domestic legitimacy (Buchanan, <span>2011</span>). By imposing reciprocal limitations on states, international institutions may increase, rather than diminish, a state's room to maneuver. Furthermore, the very act of joining and submitting to international authority may be seen as an expression of state autonomy rather than a surrender of it. Without dismissing the growing opposition to international institutions as uninformed, misguided, or insincere, this special symposium seeks to deepen our theoretical understanding of the complex authority and power relations between international legal arrangements and states and between particular international institutions and the broader institutional structure in which they are embedded.</p>\n<p>More specifically, the special symposium explores power relations and legitimacy issues in the context of international legal institutions in two dimensions. It assesses, first, what we call vertical power, that is, power and authority exercised by international bodies over states and societies. The special symposium explores claims made about power abuse and illegitimacy by investigating how this kind of power operates, what sort of legitimacy problems it gives rise to, and the normative conditions and criteria of legitimacy that are relevant. Second, the special symposium addresses questions about the international horizontal allocation of power, that is, the division of functions, roles, and responsibilities among international institutions. The fact that international institutions are not part of a centralized government, but instead constitute a decentralized and fragmented system, and that specific institutions are limited in their functions, roles, and capacities, creates special kinds of legitimacy problems and dilemmas. International institutions are furthermore embedded in a predominantly state-based structural background with inbuilt power imbalances, which pose an additional challenge to assessing their legitimacy.</p>\n<p>Against this backdrop, the articles in this collection focus on a range of complementary topics. They entertain broad conceptual and normative questions about the authority mechanisms that can compel states to comply with the directives of international institutions (Scherz) and about the underlying power dynamics of the global political order (Aytac), about the rise of populism as a threat to multilateralism in the European Union and elsewhere (Cozzaglio and Efthymiou), and about the wider questions of legitimacy and sovereignty that guide these themes. Our contributors also focus on specific transnational institutions like the International Criminal Court (ICC; Christiano) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR; Follesdal). By addressing these conceptual and theoretical legitimacy questions and applying them to specific institutions, this special symposium contributes to a growing literature on the legitimacy of international institutions (Adams et al., <span>2020</span>; Buchanan &amp; Keohane, <span>2006</span>; Christiano, <span>2012</span>; Follesdal, <span>2006</span>; Hurd, <span>2019</span>; Scherz, <span>2021</span>; Tallberg et al., <span>2018</span>; Tallberg &amp; Zürn, <span>2019</span>) from a decidedly normative perspective.</p>\n<p>Scherz's paper addresses an important philosophical puzzle: under what circumstances can international institutions legitimately demand state compliance with their norms? While theories of political legitimacy abound, they generally focus on binding obligations between states and individuals; the legitimacy claims of international institutions on sovereign states often go unexplored. After outlining her own “autonomy-based” conception of legitimacy, Scherz argues that states do indeed have reasons to comply with international institutions, as a condition of their legitimacy. These claims apply to both democratic and nondemocratic states.</p>\n<p>Christiano's paper focuses, more specifically, on the legitimacy dilemmas surrounding the ICC. The ICC has been accused of selective prosecution—targeting African militia leaders and officials deemed unfriendly to Western powers. And it often “asymmetrically” targets one party to a conflict while leaving the other untargeted. Christiano wonders whether this “selective prosecution” threatens the legitimacy of the ICC. Without resolving the normative status of the institution generally, he nonetheless clarifies the terms upon which future determinations of its legitimacy should proceed, while considering strategies for mitigating the problem of selective prosecution. Christiano remains broadly sympathetic to the ICC and its mission, but attuned to the distinctive challenges the ICC faces in the international arena; the article offers a “clear-eyed understanding of its operation and the political context in which it is operating” (Christiano, p. 2).</p>\n<p>However, as Aytac's contribution argues, all international institutions must contend with the structural power of the transnational capitalist class. Global business elites function as an interlocking community, through their position on corporate directorates, policy groups, NGO's, and prominent international financial institutions. Together, they disproportionately shape global policy and even impose constraints on state power, by engaging in activities like capital flight and tax sheltering (Arlen &amp; Burelli, <span>2022</span>). Any account of global political legitimacy must, Aytac argues, account for this structural power. Drawing on a sophisticated “radical realist” methodology, Aytac differentiates his approach from more conventional global justice discourses; arguing that realist philosophical frameworks are best suited to capture the distinctive power constellation manifested by global business elites.</p>\n<p>The European Union, which arguably attracts the greatest breadth of legitimacy challenges in international politics today, is the focus of Cozzaglio and Efthymiou's contribution. Many challenges to EU legitimacy are waged by populists, on both sides of the spectrum, who view the institution as fundamentally undemocratic and elitist. Populists attack both the “input” legitimacy generated by the EU's rules and procedures, and the “output” legitimacy associated with its political outcomes. Yet this populist challenge to EU legitimacy ultimately lacks coherence, the authors argue. For one thing, not all populists are nationalists: some, like Jeremy Corbyn's labor party, adopt anti-elitist language while maintaining a cosmopolitan stance on the EU. Moreover, many populists deploy a distinction between “the people” and the “elite” which, the authors argue, fails to withstand conceptual scrutiny. The populist challenge to EU legitimacy ultimately proves redundant, they contend; “old wine in new bottles, after all” (Cozzaglio and Efthymiou, p. 13). It adds little to the longstanding debates between statists and cosmopolitans that have evolved since the EU's founding.</p>\n<p>Follesdal's contribution focuses more specifically on the ECtHR. This institution plays a dynamic role vis-à-vis EU member states: ensuring that those states are complying with human rights norms and informing citizens of one EU country about the human rights record of other EU countries. But as Follesdal argues, deference to the judicial authority of member states is sometimes justified, especially when domestic judges have epistemic advantages—that is, greater respect for local decision-making, values, and traditions. The challenge, then, is balancing the ECtHR's judicial review powers against the “pockets” of judicial sovereignty maintained by EU member states. The balance can be struck, Follesdal argues, but doing so will require effort to fine-tune our understanding of the ECtHR, including by making it more demographically representative. Like the ICC, the legitimacy of the ECtHR remains a work in progress.</p>\n<p>By analyzing these power and authority relations, the essays in this special symposium thus make general theoretical contributions to the debate over legitimacy beyond the state. But they do this by studying particular international legal institutions and the specific and sometimes sui generis normative problems they generate. In this way, the special symposium furthers our knowledge of the normative issues arising in the context of international institutions.</p>","PeriodicalId":46756,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Social Philosophy","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12554","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

In democracies around the world, political forces calling for a rollback of globalization are on the ascendancy. Longstanding consensus about the benefits of free trade and human rights and around the legitimacy of the international institutions enabling these goods has been questioned by successful populist politicians on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Some even claim that the entire liberal international order has become contested, perhaps as never before (Lake et al., 2021). An emerging critique of multilateralism argues that states and peoples should not be shackled by international legal arrangements and international law, but rather, that states should “do it alone.” The picture painted is one where state sovereignty is constrained and undermined by international institutions. This view implies that there is necessarily a tradeoff between multilateralism and state autonomy.

Yet, in our globalized world, the relationship between state autonomy and international legal institutions is more complex than both critics and some defenders of the international order acknowledge. Though states frequently find themselves under pressure to join international legal institutions, this is often because there are good reasons to do so. In a globalized world, membership in these institutions is often crucial for states to function properly, serving their citizens domestically, while also cultivating productive relationships with other states. Therefore, international institutions may contribute to the construction of domestic legitimacy (Buchanan, 2011). By imposing reciprocal limitations on states, international institutions may increase, rather than diminish, a state's room to maneuver. Furthermore, the very act of joining and submitting to international authority may be seen as an expression of state autonomy rather than a surrender of it. Without dismissing the growing opposition to international institutions as uninformed, misguided, or insincere, this special symposium seeks to deepen our theoretical understanding of the complex authority and power relations between international legal arrangements and states and between particular international institutions and the broader institutional structure in which they are embedded.

More specifically, the special symposium explores power relations and legitimacy issues in the context of international legal institutions in two dimensions. It assesses, first, what we call vertical power, that is, power and authority exercised by international bodies over states and societies. The special symposium explores claims made about power abuse and illegitimacy by investigating how this kind of power operates, what sort of legitimacy problems it gives rise to, and the normative conditions and criteria of legitimacy that are relevant. Second, the special symposium addresses questions about the international horizontal allocation of power, that is, the division of functions, roles, and responsibilities among international institutions. The fact that international institutions are not part of a centralized government, but instead constitute a decentralized and fragmented system, and that specific institutions are limited in their functions, roles, and capacities, creates special kinds of legitimacy problems and dilemmas. International institutions are furthermore embedded in a predominantly state-based structural background with inbuilt power imbalances, which pose an additional challenge to assessing their legitimacy.

Against this backdrop, the articles in this collection focus on a range of complementary topics. They entertain broad conceptual and normative questions about the authority mechanisms that can compel states to comply with the directives of international institutions (Scherz) and about the underlying power dynamics of the global political order (Aytac), about the rise of populism as a threat to multilateralism in the European Union and elsewhere (Cozzaglio and Efthymiou), and about the wider questions of legitimacy and sovereignty that guide these themes. Our contributors also focus on specific transnational institutions like the International Criminal Court (ICC; Christiano) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR; Follesdal). By addressing these conceptual and theoretical legitimacy questions and applying them to specific institutions, this special symposium contributes to a growing literature on the legitimacy of international institutions (Adams et al., 2020; Buchanan & Keohane, 2006; Christiano, 2012; Follesdal, 2006; Hurd, 2019; Scherz, 2021; Tallberg et al., 2018; Tallberg & Zürn, 2019) from a decidedly normative perspective.

Scherz's paper addresses an important philosophical puzzle: under what circumstances can international institutions legitimately demand state compliance with their norms? While theories of political legitimacy abound, they generally focus on binding obligations between states and individuals; the legitimacy claims of international institutions on sovereign states often go unexplored. After outlining her own “autonomy-based” conception of legitimacy, Scherz argues that states do indeed have reasons to comply with international institutions, as a condition of their legitimacy. These claims apply to both democratic and nondemocratic states.

Christiano's paper focuses, more specifically, on the legitimacy dilemmas surrounding the ICC. The ICC has been accused of selective prosecution—targeting African militia leaders and officials deemed unfriendly to Western powers. And it often “asymmetrically” targets one party to a conflict while leaving the other untargeted. Christiano wonders whether this “selective prosecution” threatens the legitimacy of the ICC. Without resolving the normative status of the institution generally, he nonetheless clarifies the terms upon which future determinations of its legitimacy should proceed, while considering strategies for mitigating the problem of selective prosecution. Christiano remains broadly sympathetic to the ICC and its mission, but attuned to the distinctive challenges the ICC faces in the international arena; the article offers a “clear-eyed understanding of its operation and the political context in which it is operating” (Christiano, p. 2).

However, as Aytac's contribution argues, all international institutions must contend with the structural power of the transnational capitalist class. Global business elites function as an interlocking community, through their position on corporate directorates, policy groups, NGO's, and prominent international financial institutions. Together, they disproportionately shape global policy and even impose constraints on state power, by engaging in activities like capital flight and tax sheltering (Arlen & Burelli, 2022). Any account of global political legitimacy must, Aytac argues, account for this structural power. Drawing on a sophisticated “radical realist” methodology, Aytac differentiates his approach from more conventional global justice discourses; arguing that realist philosophical frameworks are best suited to capture the distinctive power constellation manifested by global business elites.

The European Union, which arguably attracts the greatest breadth of legitimacy challenges in international politics today, is the focus of Cozzaglio and Efthymiou's contribution. Many challenges to EU legitimacy are waged by populists, on both sides of the spectrum, who view the institution as fundamentally undemocratic and elitist. Populists attack both the “input” legitimacy generated by the EU's rules and procedures, and the “output” legitimacy associated with its political outcomes. Yet this populist challenge to EU legitimacy ultimately lacks coherence, the authors argue. For one thing, not all populists are nationalists: some, like Jeremy Corbyn's labor party, adopt anti-elitist language while maintaining a cosmopolitan stance on the EU. Moreover, many populists deploy a distinction between “the people” and the “elite” which, the authors argue, fails to withstand conceptual scrutiny. The populist challenge to EU legitimacy ultimately proves redundant, they contend; “old wine in new bottles, after all” (Cozzaglio and Efthymiou, p. 13). It adds little to the longstanding debates between statists and cosmopolitans that have evolved since the EU's founding.

Follesdal's contribution focuses more specifically on the ECtHR. This institution plays a dynamic role vis-à-vis EU member states: ensuring that those states are complying with human rights norms and informing citizens of one EU country about the human rights record of other EU countries. But as Follesdal argues, deference to the judicial authority of member states is sometimes justified, especially when domestic judges have epistemic advantages—that is, greater respect for local decision-making, values, and traditions. The challenge, then, is balancing the ECtHR's judicial review powers against the “pockets” of judicial sovereignty maintained by EU member states. The balance can be struck, Follesdal argues, but doing so will require effort to fine-tune our understanding of the ECtHR, including by making it more demographically representative. Like the ICC, the legitimacy of the ECtHR remains a work in progress.

By analyzing these power and authority relations, the essays in this special symposium thus make general theoretical contributions to the debate over legitimacy beyond the state. But they do this by studying particular international legal institutions and the specific and sometimes sui generis normative problems they generate. In this way, the special symposium furthers our knowledge of the normative issues arising in the context of international institutions.

对国际机构和权力合法性的新视角
在世界各地的民主国家,要求全球化倒退的政治力量正在崛起。关于自由贸易和人权的好处,以及促成这些好处的国际机构的合法性的长期共识,受到了意识形态光谱双方成功的民粹主义政治家的质疑。一些人甚至声称,整个自由主义国际秩序都受到了质疑,这可能是前所未有的(Lake et al., 2021)。对多边主义的一种新批评认为,国家和人民不应受到国际法律安排和国际法的束缚,而应“单独行动”。在这幅图景中,国家主权受到国际机构的约束和破坏。这种观点意味着,在多边主义和国家自治之间必然存在一种权衡。然而,在我们这个全球化的世界里,国家自治和国际法律机构之间的关系比国际秩序的批评者和一些捍卫者所承认的要复杂得多。尽管各国经常发现自己面临加入国际法律机构的压力,但这往往是因为有充分的理由这样做。在一个全球化的世界里,这些机构的成员资格往往对国家正常运作至关重要,既要在国内为其公民服务,又要与其他国家建立富有成效的关系。因此,国际制度可能有助于构建国内合法性(Buchanan, 2011)。通过对国家施加相互限制,国际机构可能会增加(而不是减少)一个国家的回旋余地。此外,加入和服从国际权威的行为可能被视为国家自治的表达,而不是放弃它。本次特别研讨会并没有将对国际机构日益增长的反对视为无知、误导或不真诚,而是试图加深我们对国际法律安排与国家之间、特定国际机构与它们所嵌入的更广泛的机构结构之间复杂的权威和权力关系的理论理解。更具体地说,专题研讨会从两个维度探讨了国际法律制度背景下的权力关系和合法性问题。首先,它评估的是我们所说的垂直权力,即国际机构对国家和社会行使的权力和权威。本次专题研讨会通过调查权力的运作方式、产生的合法性问题以及与之相关的合法性规范条件和标准,探讨了关于权力滥用和非法性的主张。第二,专题讨论会讨论有关国际横向权力分配的问题,即国际机构之间职能、作用和责任的划分。国际机构不是中央集权政府的一部分,而是一个分散和碎片化的体系,而特定机构的职能、角色和能力受到限制,这一事实造成了特殊的合法性问题和困境。此外,国际机构植根于以国家为主导的结构背景中,其内部存在权力失衡,这对评估其合法性构成了额外的挑战。在此背景下,本系列中的文章关注一系列补充性主题。他们探讨了广泛的概念和规范问题,包括能够迫使国家遵守国际机构指令的权威机制(Scherz)、全球政治秩序的潜在权力动态(Aytac)、民粹主义崛起对欧盟和其他地区多边主义的威胁(Cozzaglio和Efthymiou),以及引导这些主题的合法性和主权等更广泛的问题。我们的撰稿人还关注具体的跨国机构,如国际刑事法院(ICC;克里斯蒂亚诺)和欧洲人权法院(欧洲人权法院;Follesdal)。通过解决这些概念和理论上的合法性问题,并将其应用于具体机构,这次特别研讨会有助于越来越多的关于国际机构合法性的文献(Adams等人,2020;布坎南,>》,2006;global, 2012;Follesdal, 2006;赫德,2019;Scherz, 2021;Tallberg et al., 2018;Tallberg,z<e:1> rn, 2019)从绝对规范的角度来看。 Scherz的论文解决了一个重要的哲学难题:在什么情况下,国际机构可以合法地要求国家遵守它们的规范?尽管有关政治合法性的理论比比皆是,但它们通常侧重于国家与个人之间的约束性义务;国际机构对主权国家的合法性主张往往无人问询。在概述了她自己的“基于自治”的合法性概念之后,Scherz认为,国家确实有理由遵守国际机构,作为其合法性的条件。这些主张既适用于民主国家,也适用于非民主国家。克里斯蒂亚诺的论文更具体地关注了围绕国际刑事法院的合法性困境。国际刑事法院被指责有选择性地起诉非洲民兵领导人和被认为对西方列强不友好的官员。而且它经常“不对称地”针对冲突中的一方,而不针对另一方。克里斯蒂亚诺怀疑这种“选择性起诉”是否会威胁到国际刑事法院的合法性。他没有从总体上解决该机构的规范地位问题,但在考虑减轻选择性起诉问题的策略时,他澄清了未来确定其合法性的条件。克里斯蒂亚诺仍然广泛同情国际刑事法院及其使命,但也了解国际刑事法院在国际舞台上面临的独特挑战;这篇文章提供了“对其运作及其运作的政治背景的清晰理解”(Christiano,第2页)。然而,正如Aytac的贡献所指出的那样,所有国际机构都必须与跨国资产阶级的结构性力量相抗衡。全球商业精英通过他们在公司董事会、政策团体、非政府组织和著名国际金融机构的职位,作为一个环环相扣的社区发挥作用。它们一起不成比例地影响着全球政策,甚至通过参与资本外逃和避税等活动,对国家权力施加限制。Burelli, 2022)。Aytac认为,任何关于全球政治合法性的解释都必须考虑到这种结构性力量。利用一种复杂的“激进现实主义”方法论,艾塔克将他的方法与更传统的全球正义话语区分开来;认为现实主义哲学框架最适合捕捉全球商业精英所表现出的独特权力星座。欧盟可以说是当今国际政治中最广泛的合法性挑战,它是科扎利奥和埃夫西米乌贡献的重点。对欧盟合法性的许多挑战都是由两边的民粹主义者发起的,他们认为欧盟从根本上来说是不民主和精英主义的。民粹主义者既攻击欧盟规则和程序产生的“输入”合法性,也攻击与其政治结果相关的“输出”合法性。然而,作者认为,这种民粹主义对欧盟合法性的挑战最终缺乏连贯性。首先,并非所有民粹主义者都是民族主义者:一些民粹主义者,比如杰里米·科尔宾(Jeremy Corbyn)领导的工党,在对欧盟保持世界主义立场的同时,采用了反精英主义的语言。此外,许多民粹主义者将“人民”和“精英”区分开来,作者认为,这种区分经不起概念上的审视。他们认为,民粹主义对欧盟合法性的挑战最终被证明是多余的;“毕竟,新瓶装陈酒”(Cozzaglio和Efthymiou,第13页)。自欧盟成立以来,中央集权主义者和世界主义者之间的长期争论就一直在演变,但这并没有增加多少争论。Follesdal的贡献更具体地侧重于欧洲人权委员会。该机构对-à-vis欧盟成员国起着动态的作用:确保这些国家遵守人权规范,并向一个欧盟国家的公民通报其他欧盟国家的人权记录。但正如Follesdal所言,尊重成员国的司法权威有时是合理的,尤其是当国内法官具有认知优势时——也就是说,更尊重当地的决策、价值观和传统。因此,挑战在于平衡欧洲人权法院的司法审查权力和欧盟成员国维护的司法主权“口袋”。Follesdal认为,平衡是可以实现的,但要做到这一点,就需要努力调整我们对《欧洲人权公约》的理解,包括使其更具人口代表性。与国际刑事法院一样,欧洲人权法院的合法性仍在进行中。通过对权力和权威关系的分析,本次专题研讨会的论文对超越国家的合法性辩论做出了一般性的理论贡献。但他们通过研究特定的国际法律制度以及它们产生的具体的、有时是自成一体的规范问题来做到这一点。 这样,特别专题讨论会增进了我们对在国际机构范围内产生的规范性问题的认识。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 求助全文
来源期刊
CiteScore
2.20
自引率
12.50%
发文量
44
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术官方微信