Solidarity without foundations: Reflexive solidarity and the ethics of justification in boundary organizations

Boundary organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA) sit at the uneasy intersection of science, politics and ethics. Their authority depends on producing knowledge that is both credible and inclusive, yet these demands often pull in opposing directions. This paper examines the legitimacy of boundary organizations through the tension between authority and answerability, drawing on Richard Rorty's pragmatism and Nancy Fraser's critique of structural injustice. To navigate this tension, the paper brings together two ideas. Reflexive solidarity, adapted from Young, grounds solidarity not in shared identity but in recognizing structural connections and one's entanglement in systems that produce harm. Three practices translate this stance into action: preserving substantive disagreement, acknowledging the violence of translation and making partial solidarities visible. Responsibility without a subject, drawing on work by Arendt, Butler and others on distributed agency, explains why accountability persists even when agency is dispersed across collective processes – not to evade responsibility but to redistribute it. Together, these offer an ethical orientation for boundary work that values responsiveness over resolution, calling for institutions capable of sustaining spaces for disagreement under conditions of pluralism and inequality.