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Global political legitimacy beyond justice and democracy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2015

Eva Erman
Eva Erman*
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
*
E-mail: eva.erman@statsvet.su.se
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Abstract

Despite the broad consensus on the value of political legitimacy in global politics, there is still little agreement on what the specific regulative content of the principles of legitimacy ought to be. Two main paths have thus far been taken in the theoretical literature to respond to the legitimacy deficit in the global domain: one via the ideal of democracy, another via the ideal of justice. However, both have run into problems. The overall purpose of this paper is to examine these two paths in the endeavour to explore the possibilities of a third path, which investigates global political legitimacy (GPL) as a value that is at a basic level distinct from democracy and justice. The paper aims to fulfil two tasks. The conceptual task consists in identifying some characteristics of the concept of GPL that makes it distinct from political legitimacy generally, as well as showing its usefulness for normative theorizing. The normative task is twofold: first, to demonstrate that the value of GPL is reducible neither to democracy nor to justice; and second, to develop the contours of a dual account of GPL, in which both justice and democracy play essential roles.

Keywords

global politicspolitical legitimacydemocratic legitimacyAllen Buchanandistributive justicehuman rights
Type
Original Papers
Information
International Theory , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 29 - 62
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

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