The Legitimation of International Governance: A Discourse Approach

This article presents a discourse approach to the study of legitimacy of governance beyond the democratic state. It starts from the empirical question of how international organizations legitimate their own activities and how they create perceptions of legitimacy in the absence of democratic participation and control. In answering this question the article draws on elements from Max Weber's theory of rational legal domination and on Jürgen Habermas's idea of legitimation through justificatory discourse. This article claims that the legitimacy of international governance hinges upon popular assent to the justifications of its goals, principles and procedures. It thereby also challenges much of the existing literature on legitimacy above the state that regards a democracy deficit a priori as a core problem of international governance.