As shown above, a number of recent studies are rather skeptical with regard to the potential of current NSA participation to enhance the legitimacy of global governance. At the same time, the assumption prevails that institutions counting with strong participation by APOs might be more apt to close legitimacy gaps in global policy-making. Existing arrangements for NSA participation differ considerably with regard to
35 Unitaid is a hosted partnership of the WHO whose main area of work is the investment in projects which strengthen the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of AIDS, tuberculosis and Malaria. Its Executive Board includes representatives of states, communities living with the diseases, NGOs, private foundations, and the WHO, see https://unitaid.org/about-us/#en, accessed 4.12.2018.
the degree to which they include the voices of those directly affected by their policies.
Moreover, different types of NSAs vary with regard to their democratic credentials (Bexell et al. 2010: 97), and APOs supposedly enjoy a comparatively high degree of legitimacy. Thus, it has been suggested that both IOs and policymakers within them consider APOs as more legitimate than their NGO counterparts (Batliwala 2002: 407).
However, as shown above many existing governance arrangements seem to precisely suffer from a lack of inclusion of these actors. Following the recommendation that research “should concentrate on mechanisms where state and non-state actors come together to promote the human rights of those people most affected by the structural injustice of the current global system” (Fraundorfer 2015: 363), this dissertation zooms in on governance mechanisms which specifically focus on giving a voice to previously disenfranchised actors. It addresses the puzzle whether participation by organizations and movements of affected actors can live up to the high expectations based on it and increase the legitimacy of global institutions. Thus, this study aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the conditions under which cooperation arrangements between state and non-state actors can be legitimate governance tools. In contrast to other research on the subject, this study explicitly does not restrict research on perceptions of legitimacy to those actors who gain a voice, namely APOs. Instead, it looks at the broader set of constituencies required to cooperate in the respective institutions to turn APO participation into a success. In other words, I assume that access opportunities for affected actors do not only affect perceptions of legitimacy held by the very same APOs, but also by delegates from states and IOs that are supposed to work together with them within transnational institutions.
More specifically, I will look at Indigenous peoples as one group of affected actors which have gained particularly far-reaching participation rights. While a growing body of literature addresses the involvement of Indigenous peoples in the UN, this literature has mostly tried to explain the rise and success of the Indigenous movement (Brysk 2000;
Muehlebach 2001; Niezen 2003; Morgan 2011) and the strategies Indigenous activists employ (Wallbott 2014). Some authors have been primarily concerned with the functioning and working of the Indigenous space within the UN (Dahl 2012; Sapignoli 2017). Others have analyzed the emerging Indigenous rights regime and the resulting challenges for states which have often reacted with resistance (Koivurova 2008;
Lightfoot 2016). Again others have highlighted the limitations of Indigenous
participation in the UN, interpreting Indigenous inclusion in global institutions as a form of colonialism in a new disguise which continues to appease, subjugate and control IPs, and have therefore sometimes argued for Indigenous empowerment and mobilization on their own terms outside of the UN (Simpson 2006; Corntassel 2007; Bellier 2013;
Lindroth & Sinevaara-Niskanen 2018). However, these studies have mostly researched Indigenous involvement in the UN as an isolated phenomenon rather than as one instance of a broader trend towards pluralist global governance and the inclusion of marginalized voices.36 Moreover, questions about legitimacy remain largely unaddressed. About 25 years ago, it has been argued that
“[p]articipation by indigenous peoples is not only important to indigenous peoples, it has also become important to international institutions. [...] [I]t is a fundamental axiom that the greater the participation by indigenous peoples in an institutional process, the more legitimate are the process and its results” (Tennant 1994: 49, italics in the original).
My dissertation project scrutinizes on this assumption. It asks whether the establishment of institutions at the UN in the field of Indigenous issues which explicitly include Indigenous voices has in fact contributed to a high degree of legitimacy of these institutions. More specifically, it asks whether extensive access for Indigenous actors as those most affected by these institutions in fact makes the actors involved – such as representatives of Indigenous organizations, state delegates, and staff of IOs – consider these institutions as strongly legitimate.37 In addition, I enquire what drives participants from states, IOs, and Indigenous organizations to support or oppose institutions in which Indigenous peoples participate, and how they form opinions regarding institutional legitimacy. My main research question thus is:
To what extent does access for Indigenous actors in Indigenous-specific UN organizations result in institutional legitimacy in the sense that these institutions are perceived as legitimate by the participating actors?
This main question is broken down into several sub-questions:
What access opportunities do UN Indigenous-specific mechanisms offer to Indigenous peoples, and to what degree are they perceived as legitimate by the participating actors (Chapter four)?
36 Notable exceptions are Sargent (2012), who has compared activism by Indigenous and minority
networks at the UN, and Lüdert (2016) who has compared the Indigenous and decolonization movements.
37 In Chapter two, I explain why I focus on the involved actors instead of looking at the “governed”
population more broadly, i.e. Indigenous peoples at the grassroots level.
How do access opportunities for organizations of Indigenous peoples translate into de facto participation, and which factors condition it (Chapter five)?
What are the effects of this participation, and through which mechanisms is participation linked to perceptions of legitimacy (Chapter six)?
The aim of the dissertation is thus threefold:
to analyze the legitimacy of UN institutions in the area of Indigenous affairs as perceived by their participants;
to contribute to the understanding of those processes that shape which actors get to participate when access opportunities are given to APOs;
to probe the plausibility of hypotheses about causal connections between the participation of affected actors and perceptions of institutional legitimacy.