This volume analyses the process by which international intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) establish their authority and, especially, the process through which they create one of the sources of their power: legitimacy. It argues that, in most cases, these institutions lack the necessary methods to enforce their authority and depend on external perceptions of their work. At the same time, it views IGOs as members of a global political community that can establish its legitimacy through its accountability to member states and to global civil society. This volume proposes and develops the notion of social legitimacy in order to examine and evaluate this process. To this end, it defines social legitimacy as a non-material trait capable of encouraging compliance and founded on the subjective perceptions of the other actors of the political community of the three objective criteria that define an IGO’s behaviour: moral values, the principle of legality, and effectiveness.
The studies on the social legitimacy of the UN, the WTO and the ILO offered in this volume highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each one’s social legitimacy, both from an objective perspective and in light of the perceptions of the various actors analysing it.
Author: Gutiérrez-Solana Journoud, Ander
Publisher: Marcial Pons, Ediciones Jurídicas y Sociales, S.A.
Published: 2014
Collection: Tribuna Internacional
No. of pages: 268
Language: Spanish
E-Secretaria
Campus Virtual (Másteres)
Moodle