In part one of the legitimacy series, panelists unpacked the concept of legitimacy and its implications for the UN system. Professor Hurd argued that “legitimacy is a belief on the part of people in the right of an institution to issue commands. It’s a belief in the rightfulness of an authority -- either an institution or a rule.” As a subjective belief, legitimacy is multiple and contested, as viewpoints differ. Legitimacy is also a source of power for political organizations like the UN which depend on persuasion -- rather than market-based incentives or military-based coercion -- to exercise influence. Professor Tyler, citing recent research, argued that legitimacy’s “rightfulness” comes from fair procedures in the creation of authorities.
Taking a more pragmatic approach, Mr. Coicaud pointed out two reasons why legitimacy is important to the UN. First, Turtle Bay lacks the the military and economic resources of leading states and thus must rely on other sources of power. And second, the global balance of power is de-westernizing, as exemplified by the BRICS and the G20. Since the UN was founded by western powers, based on western ideals, and headquartered in the West, the shifting geopolitical landscape poses a threat to its relative influence.
PANEL: Jean-Marc Coicaud, Director of UNU in New York and former speechwriter for Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali; Ian Hurd, Professor of international relations at Northwestern university and visiting fellow at the Niehaus Center on Globalization and Governance at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University; Roland Riche, Executive Director of the UN Democracy Fund and former diplomat and scholar; and Valerie Sperling, professor of political science at Clark University.
PROFESSOR HURD commenced the second panel by reiterating how debates often proceed in the “language of legitimacy.” By contrast, debates about US government proceed in the “language of legality.” The distinction, he suggests, results from their respective institutional structures. The UN is an intergovernmental body of sovereign states, whose actions impact civil society but are largely insulated from public input. An example of the latter is the lack of an independent judiciary to determine whether UN policies and decisions are consistent with the UN Charter.
In the absence of such accountability mechanisms, civil society plays a passive role. The US government, on the other hand, is a democracy of elected representatives, whose actions are informed by and accountable to the public. “The people,” NGOs and other civil society actors have access to numerous accountability mechanisms, including the right to vote leaders out or appeal to an independent judicial branch concerning the constitutionality of a particular action. Civil society thus plays an active role in domestic democracies like the US’s.
Expanding on the theme of accountable governance, MR. COICAUD commenced by considering the merits of a UN parliament, which is considered by many as a crucial step toward reducing the world body’s democratic deficit. Although certainly an option, he notes, a number of questions must first be addressed: Who will be able to run for the parliamentary seats? How would the conflict of state seats versus people seats be reconciled? Similarly, what would be the power sharing arrangement between a parliament and the current inter-state system, the latter of which is “part and parcel of the UN”? More fundamentally, is a parliamentary system really the solution many propose it to be? For there is already a huge crisis of political representation in parliaments around the world: in developed and developing countries alike, elected leaders conflate public and private interests; why would it be any different at the UN-level? The prospects for a UN parliament, to Mr. Coicaud, are grim.
Shifting attention to areas of UN work where civil society is already established -- such as NGO participation in economic and social conferences -- Mr. Coicaud cites positive and negative results. A positive outcome has been that UN work is now seen as more engaged with the demands of regular citizens across the world. That increases UN legitimacy. At the same time, however, the NGOs participating in UN work are among the biggest and largely based in the West. Smaller, non-western NGOs are underrepresented at Turtle Bay, a problem Mr. Riche attributes in part to the highly politicized 19-member UN Committee on NGOs.
PROFESSOR VALERIE SPERLING, the guest academic of the day, stressed the importance of legitimacy in democratic institutions, before applying the concept to Turtle Bay. One of the ways democracies earn legitimacy, she explains, is through accountable governance, which requires that accountability mechanisms are in place for the electorate.
Professor Sperling has seen positive and negative examples of accountable UN governance. A negative case is the conditionality of loan agreements between the World Bank and states, most of which are implemented without public input. For instance, lesser developed countries are sometimes barred from increasing wages as a condition of accepting funds. Such arrangements can erode the rights of the public, she argues: not only are citizens excluded from the decision-making process, they are bound by the conditions for a defined period -- despite the election of a new government. Essentially, elected officials shift accountability from their citizens to the World Bank when accepting conditional loans, according to Professor Sperling.
The World Bank’s Inspection Panel represents a more positive example of accountable UN governance. If two or more individuals can make the case that they will be negatively impacted by a World Bank-funded project, they can appeal to the Inspection Panel, which will investigate whether the Bank is complying with internal standards to protect indigenous people, the environment, resettlement, etc. Professor Sterling notes that although many claims brought to the Panel have been successful -- meaning they effectively stopped harmful projects -- many have not succeeded because the Panel cannot compel the Bank to act. By providing public assessments of the Bank’s breach of standards, the Panel merely recommends certain actions. Despite this weakness, she notes, the Panel represents a step toward more accountable (and legitimate) UN governance.
ROLAND RICHE, the panel’s guest practitioner, began by stressing that UN legitimacy -- which stems from the organization’s “universal” representativeness -- must be balanced with effectiveness in order to adapt to a changing world. In short, “legitimacy is not a cure for ineffectiveness and ineffectiveness will eat away at legitimacy.”
Incorporating the expertise of civil society into UN work, he argues, bolsters both effectiveness and legitimacy. The UN has done well, he argues, inviting NGOs into decision- and policy-making processes on social and economic issues since the 1990s. For example, the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) -- a mechanism designed to examine the human rights performance of all Member States -- gives unprecedented access to organizations like Amnesty International on human rights issues. Although potentially deleterious to those states, Amnesty’s presence injects transparency and legitimacy into the Human Rights Council in particular and the UN in general.
An area that could be improved upon regarding civil society participation, he argues, is taming the highly politicized 19-member UN Committee on NGOs; the “gatekeepers,” in the words of Mr. Riche.
The Limits to UN-Civil Society Engagement
Expanding on a theme from last week, members of the second panel emphasized UN adaptation to a changing world. Rolande Riche of the UN Democracy Fund applauded Turtle Bay’s inclusion of NGOs in economic and social issues. Their incorporation has increased both UN effectiveness (through NGO expertise) and legitimacy (through accountability to civil society). Yet, as Mr. Coicaud pointed out, only the most influential NGOs have gained access to the UN system, the far majority of which come from the West; reform of the UN Committee on NGOs could alleviate this bias.
Accountability to civil society was also a dominant theme in the second panel. Professor Sperling argued that legitimacy is a key component of democracy, and a prerequisite for legitimacy is accountable governance. That does not bode well for the UN, which provides civil society a fraction of the accountability mechanisms available domestic democracies. Although there are signs of progress in this area, she observed, the UN’s intergovernmental structure poses a formidable barrier to public input. As Mr. Riche noted in closing: “Domestically, legitimacy does flow from democracy. Internationally, it’s much harder. Francis Fukuyama once argued that we’ve got to be very careful with word democracy. It does not scale up to everything.”
Next week: Part III of the legitimacy series will explore UN legitimacy and peace operations.
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The UN Legitimacy Series, Part II: UN Legitimacy vis-à-vis Civil Society
July 7, 2011
In part one of the legitimacy series, panelists unpacked the concept of legitimacy and its implications for the UN system. Professor Hurd argued that “legitimacy is a belief on the part of people in the right of an institution to issue commands. It’s a belief in the rightfulness of an authority -- either an institution or a rule.” As a subjective belief, legitimacy is multiple and contested, as viewpoints differ. Legitimacy is also a source of power for political organizations like the UN which depend on persuasion -- rather than market-based incentives or military-based coercion -- to exercise influence. Professor Tyler, citing recent research, argued that legitimacy’s “rightfulness” comes from fair procedures in the creation of authorities.
Taking a more pragmatic approach, Mr. Coicaud pointed out two reasons why legitimacy is important to the UN. First, Turtle Bay lacks the the military and economic resources of leading states and thus must rely on other sources of power. And second, the global balance of power is de-westernizing, as exemplified by the BRICS and the G20. Since the UN was founded by western powers, based on western ideals, and headquartered in the West, the shifting geopolitical landscape poses a threat to its relative influence.
PANEL: Jean-Marc Coicaud, Director of UNU in New York and former speechwriter for Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali; Ian Hurd, Professor of international relations at Northwestern university and visiting fellow at the Niehaus Center on Globalization and Governance at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University; Roland Riche, Executive Director of the UN Democracy Fund and former diplomat and scholar; and Valerie Sperling, professor of political science at Clark University.
PROFESSOR HURD commenced the second panel by reiterating how debates often proceed in the “language of legitimacy.” By contrast, debates about US government proceed in the “language of legality.” The distinction, he suggests, results from their respective institutional structures. The UN is an intergovernmental body of sovereign states, whose actions impact civil society but are largely insulated from public input. An example of the latter is the lack of an independent judiciary to determine whether UN policies and decisions are consistent with the UN Charter.
In the absence of such accountability mechanisms, civil society plays a passive role. The US government, on the other hand, is a democracy of elected representatives, whose actions are informed by and accountable to the public. “The people,” NGOs and other civil society actors have access to numerous accountability mechanisms, including the right to vote leaders out or appeal to an independent judicial branch concerning the constitutionality of a particular action. Civil society thus plays an active role in domestic democracies like the US’s.
Expanding on the theme of accountable governance, MR. COICAUD commenced by considering the merits of a UN parliament, which is considered by many as a crucial step toward reducing the world body’s democratic deficit. Although certainly an option, he notes, a number of questions must first be addressed: Who will be able to run for the parliamentary seats? How would the conflict of state seats versus people seats be reconciled? Similarly, what would be the power sharing arrangement between a parliament and the current inter-state system, the latter of which is “part and parcel of the UN”? More fundamentally, is a parliamentary system really the solution many propose it to be? For there is already a huge crisis of political representation in parliaments around the world: in developed and developing countries alike, elected leaders conflate public and private interests; why would it be any different at the UN-level? The prospects for a UN parliament, to Mr. Coicaud, are grim.
Shifting attention to areas of UN work where civil society is already established -- such as NGO participation in economic and social conferences -- Mr. Coicaud cites positive and negative results. A positive outcome has been that UN work is now seen as more engaged with the demands of regular citizens across the world. That increases UN legitimacy. At the same time, however, the NGOs participating in UN work are among the biggest and largely based in the West. Smaller, non-western NGOs are underrepresented at Turtle Bay, a problem Mr. Riche attributes in part to the highly politicized 19-member UN Committee on NGOs.
PROFESSOR VALERIE SPERLING, the guest academic of the day, stressed the importance of legitimacy in democratic institutions, before applying the concept to Turtle Bay. One of the ways democracies earn legitimacy, she explains, is through accountable governance, which requires that accountability mechanisms are in place for the electorate.
Professor Sperling has seen positive and negative examples of accountable UN governance. A negative case is the conditionality of loan agreements between the World Bank and states, most of which are implemented without public input. For instance, lesser developed countries are sometimes barred from increasing wages as a condition of accepting funds. Such arrangements can erode the rights of the public, she argues: not only are citizens excluded from the decision-making process, they are bound by the conditions for a defined period -- despite the election of a new government. Essentially, elected officials shift accountability from their citizens to the World Bank when accepting conditional loans, according to Professor Sperling.
The World Bank’s Inspection Panel represents a more positive example of accountable UN governance. If two or more individuals can make the case that they will be negatively impacted by a World Bank-funded project, they can appeal to the Inspection Panel, which will investigate whether the Bank is complying with internal standards to protect indigenous people, the environment, resettlement, etc. Professor Sterling notes that although many claims brought to the Panel have been successful -- meaning they effectively stopped harmful projects -- many have not succeeded because the Panel cannot compel the Bank to act. By providing public assessments of the Bank’s breach of standards, the Panel merely recommends certain actions. Despite this weakness, she notes, the Panel represents a step toward more accountable (and legitimate) UN governance.
ROLAND RICHE, the panel’s guest practitioner, began by stressing that UN legitimacy -- which stems from the organization’s “universal” representativeness -- must be balanced with effectiveness in order to adapt to a changing world. In short, “legitimacy is not a cure for ineffectiveness and ineffectiveness will eat away at legitimacy.”
Incorporating the expertise of civil society into UN work, he argues, bolsters both effectiveness and legitimacy. The UN has done well, he argues, inviting NGOs into decision- and policy-making processes on social and economic issues since the 1990s. For example, the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) -- a mechanism designed to examine the human rights performance of all Member States -- gives unprecedented access to organizations like Amnesty International on human rights issues. Although potentially deleterious to those states, Amnesty’s presence injects transparency and legitimacy into the Human Rights Council in particular and the UN in general.
An area that could be improved upon regarding civil society participation, he argues, is taming the highly politicized 19-member UN Committee on NGOs; the “gatekeepers,” in the words of Mr. Riche.
The Limits to UN-Civil Society Engagement
Expanding on a theme from last week, members of the second panel emphasized UN adaptation to a changing world. Rolande Riche of the UN Democracy Fund applauded Turtle Bay’s inclusion of NGOs in economic and social issues. Their incorporation has increased both UN effectiveness (through NGO expertise) and legitimacy (through accountability to civil society). Yet, as Mr. Coicaud pointed out, only the most influential NGOs have gained access to the UN system, the far majority of which come from the West; reform of the UN Committee on NGOs could alleviate this bias.
Accountability to civil society was also a dominant theme in the second panel. Professor Sperling argued that legitimacy is a key component of democracy, and a prerequisite for legitimacy is accountable governance. That does not bode well for the UN, which provides civil society a fraction of the accountability mechanisms available domestic democracies. Although there are signs of progress in this area, she observed, the UN’s intergovernmental structure poses a formidable barrier to public input. As Mr. Riche noted in closing: “Domestically, legitimacy does flow from democracy. Internationally, it’s much harder. Francis Fukuyama once argued that we’ve got to be very careful with word democracy. It does not scale up to everything.”
Next week: Part III of the legitimacy series will explore UN legitimacy and peace operations.
