The crisis of global governance : can international political legitimacy be maintained?

Abstract

This essay explores the severity of the current crisis moment for global governance. This crisis is predicated upon decreased engagement of key western democracies coupled with the rising presence and tolerance of illiberal practices and authoritarian states. The essay argues that the crisis is one of legitimacy, which is not specific to a particular approach to global governance, but is in fact representative of the barriers to legitimacy for multilateral institutions in their entirety. The essay begins by situating the crisis moment and expanding on key factors that have contributed to it, including populism, nationalism, xenophobia, illiberalism, and organizational funding schemes. Drawing on the literature of John Ikenberry and Amitav Acharya, the liberal internationalist and fragmentation approaches are used as analytical frameworks to understand the relationship between political legitimacy and global governance. This exploration of legitimacy draws on early modern theorists Thomas Hobbes and Max Weber and connects to analyses of international political legitimacy through Jan-Aart Scholte and Jonas Tallberg. The discussion of legitimacy examines input and output sources of legitimacy for global governance institutions. Based on the coexistence of liberal internationalism and fragmentation, the essay concludes that the two approaches are not in conflict with each other as one might assume, but instead both continue to grapple with the question of international legitimacy. The purpose of this essay is to identify the key barriers to legitimacy facing global governance approaches. The essay concludes by identifying important components of international political legitimacy that must be further considered when assessing global governance approaches.