Legitimacy in International Relations: From State Compliance to Citizen Consensus

Abstract

The term ‘legitimacy’ is ubiquitous in the discourse of international politics. Politicians use it, journalists use it, non-governmental organization (NGO) campaigners use it. A Google Internet search combining the terms ‘Kofi Annan’ and ‘legitimacy’ yields an impressive 558,000 hits.¹ Yet, even if the world speaks both of, and about, legitimacy, it is not exactly a central topic of international relations (IR) theory. The body of academic literature that systematically discusses legitimacy in IR appears rather slim when compared to the numerous treatises on state power and national interest. What is more, as in other subfields of the social sciences, legitimacy remains a contested concept. International relations scholars do not agree on what precisely the term should mean with reference to international politics, so that there is still great need for conceptual clarification and debate (Schmitter 2001; Bernstein 2004; Kratochwil 2006). One conceptual problem has hardly been discussed at all — traditionally, the disciplines of IR and international law have conceived legitimacy as being an issue among states. This traditional framing stands in stark contrast with much of the more recent literature — in particular, of the normative variant. Since the 1990s, a good deal of the legitimacy debate has focused primarily on the relationship between citizens and international or supranational organizations.