The increased role of non-state actors in global politics has generated much scholarly interest and debate both with regard to why it occurs, and with regard to its effects.
Regarding the latter, one central question which scholars seek to answer is whether access for NSAs is making global governance more effective and legitimate. Access in this context refers to the formal institutional structures and mechanisms which IOs offer to APOs and other NSAs in order to engage with them on a continuous basis (Tallberg et al.
2013: 8). Access opportunities enable the participation by NSAs in global policy-making, and thus are assumed to improve the legitimacy of global governance. Recent research has addressed this relationship between NSA access and legitimacy from both normative and empirical perspectives (see Chapter two). While those taking a normative approach to legitimacy argue convincingly for the participation of NSAs, the capacity of existing arrangements for NSA access to fulfill normative requirements seems less clear. In turn, those scholars who have approached legitimacy from an empirical viewpoint have suggested that broad access opportunities for NSAs in an institution have a limited potential to improve perceptions of legitimacy of the respective institution at best. Both strands of research will be presented in more detail in the following.
1.3.1 Scholarship taking normative perspectives on legitimacy
From a normative perspective on legitimacy, scholars have argued that democratic legitimacy at the global level cannot rest on the same foundations as at the national level. Therefore, alternative models such as global stakeholder democracy or polycentric democracy have been developed (Bäckstrand 2006; Dingwerth 2007; Macdonald 2008;
Archibugi et al. 2012). These conceptions of global democracy commonly assume that for transnational governance initiatives to be legitimate, all stakeholders – i.e. actors affected by the institution’s actions – need to be able to participate in decision-making.
In other words, there is a growing consensus among these scholars that meaningful NSA participation is indispensable for legitimate transnational policy-making (Tallberg &
Uhlin 2012: 210; Fraundorfer 2015: 337). Similarly, Dingwerth and Weise (2012) argue that we are currently witnessing the rise of a new norm of legitimate governance beyond the state which complements older governance norms relying on state consent and which implies a need to involve representatives of affected interests through appropriately inclusive, transparent and accountable procedures.
However, empirical evidence pointing to the ability of NSA involvement to fulfill these normative criteria remains inconclusive. Generally both the “promises and the pitfalls”
of NSA participation in transnational policy-making have been highlighted (Bexell et al.
2010). Several factors seem to be decisive in this context: First, access rights can range from rather passive observer and consultation rights to voting and decision-making rights. In practice, however, meaningful access for NSAs which includes decision-making rights still seems to be the exception rather than the rule (Tallberg & Uhlin 2012: 217).
Moreover, the ability of affected actors to hold decision-makers accountable also strongly varies (Schäferhoff et al. 2009: 468). Additionally, tensions and trade-offs between different dimensions of legitimacy such as transparency and deliberation seem to exist (Bexell et al. 2010: 95–96). However, Abbott and Gartner (2012: 25–30) find that in terms of legitimacy, institutions in global health governance which count with innovative measures of civil society participation (such as the Global Fund) outperform similar institutions in global environmental governance which restrict participation opportunities for civil society. In other words, access for NSA actors does not automatically make governance arrangements more legitimate, and the concrete participation arrangements and institutional design need to be taken into consideration
when evaluating the legitimacy impact of NSA involvement (Schäferhoff et al. 2009:
469).
Moreover, it has been assumed that the democratic credentials or legitimacy scores of participating actors strongly impact on the legitimacy of an institution. A typical normative statement in this regard is the following: “CSOs which participate directly in global policy making need to have democratic legitimacy if the policy making should be deemed more democratic as a result of their involvement” (Tallberg & Uhlin 2012: 220–
221). NSAs are not legitimated by or accountable to a demos. Therefore, they need to rely on other criteria of legitimacy. In recent years, an entire strand of research has developed which aims at measuring the democratic quality and legitimacy of NSAs (Bexell et al. 2010; Steffek & Hahn 2010). The basic insight by this literature is that NSAs can be democratic (and thus their participation may enhance the legitimacy of new modes of governance), but not all of them are.
One important condition of success in this regard seems to be involvement of those directly affected. It has been assumed that legitimacy is generated if all those who are affected by a decision may provide input to the decision-making process (Schäferhoff et al. 2009: 466). Others have argued that legitimacy may be strengthened specifically in those cases in which groups normally underrepresented at the national level are actively integrated into decision-making structures (Martens 2007: 33). In reality, however, many partnerships between state and non-state actors seem to have lacked precisely this input by local communities.
Based on a literature review, Schäferhoff et al. (2009: 468; see also Bexell et al. 2010:
87) argue that affected actors are underrepresented in most partnerships. The authors find that both resource constraints and power imbalances may hamper the quality of participation in partnerships, especially with regard to participants from the South.
Similarly, with regard to the United Nations it has been argued that “[w]hat are missing are the voices of those most affected by the inequities of current global governance”
(McKeon 2009: 174). Problems of democratic legitimacy may even be aggravated as representatives of non-state organizations generally are not elected, and some NGOs tend to be self-selected and elite-driven. Moreover, as NSAs which get to participate are mostly based in the western world, there are concerns that their participation might actually further the North-South divide (Raines 2003; Börzel & Risse 2005: 211–212;
Tallberg & Uhlin 2012: 216). Thus, it has been observed that partnerships “reproduce precisely the power relationships and asymmetries that exist in the international system” (Martens 2007: 41).
1.3.2 Scholarship based on sociological variants of legitimacy
Recently, sociological variants of legitimacy in global governance are receiving increased attention. In these studies, scholars do not ask whether transnational initiatives confirm to a set of pre-defined criteria of democratic legitimacy, but instead focus on whether concerned actors or stakeholders perceive an institution to be legitimate. Contrary to what one would expect, these studies suggest that the link between NSA participation opportunities in IOs and perceptions of institutional legitimacy is weak at best. Thus, recent studies have found that the legitimacy of IOs as perceived by citizens is rather based on the capacity to generate benefits for states and societies or in the general confidence in political institutions than in the representation of citizens’ interests within it or in the evaluation of procedures as democratic (Dellmuth & Tallberg 2015; Ecker-Ehrhardt 2015). Similarly, Nasiritousi and colleagues (2016) show that instrumental views following neocorporatist and (to a somewhat lesser extent) neo-functionalist rationales dominate actors’ perceptions of why NSAs should be included in global policy-making processes. In other words, participants in these processes highlight as reasons for their involvement that NSAs have important stakes in decisions that are being made and bring in specific expertise and information, rather than pinpointing the stronger representation of marginalized views in global policy-making.
In turn, Agné et al. (2015) have in a large-n survey analyzed experiences and perceptions of democratic legitimacy by stakeholder organizations involved in global and regional IOs and have found that increased participation opportunities for NSAs do not result in beliefs of higher democratic legitimacy. The authors suggest two possible explanations for this paradoxical outcome: First, the absent impact of participation opportunities on perceptions of legitimacy might reflect the limited power of stakeholder organizations in global policy-making. In other words, participating stakeholder organizations realize that their impact on outcomes within IOs is minimal at best, as the proceedings remain profoundly shaped by the decisions taken by states (Agné et al. 2015: 485). In fact, it has been shown that even within the UN World Summit on the Information Society, where NGO participation was particularly strong, its
influence on outcomes was only marginal (Dany 2014). Second, the lacking effect of opportunities for NSA participation on democratic legitimacy might result from the awareness among participating NSAs of the distortions and imbalances with regard to their own representativeness (Agné et al. 2015: 485). This second assumption resonates with the findings presented above suggesting that the participation of non-state actors in global governance is severely distorted towards more resource-rich western NGOs, while it has by tendency excluded southern grassroots voices.
In short, independent of whether scholars take normative or sociological perspectives on legitimacy, they have identified the lack of participation by marginalized actors as one limitation of existing access arrangements for NSAs. At the same time, a number of scholars have assumed that the participation by affected actors through their own organizations might enhance legitimacy and democratize global policy-making. For example, Batliwala (2002: 396) argues that due to their strong roots in local communities “transnational grassroots movements manifest an important force for democratizing global society’s structure, agendas, and strategies”. Sändig and colleagues (2019) suggest that by strengthening the agency of marginalized populations with lived experience with regard to the issue at stake, bringing in their distinct policy proposals and thus enriching debates, the inclusion of APOs promises to make global policy-making more legitimate.Looking at empirical examples, both the CFS and Unitaid35 have been described as encouraging experiments of global democracy, i. a. with a view to the enhanced opportunities for participation and representation of affected populations within them (Fraundorfer 2015).