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Global Governance Organizations: Legitimacy And Authority In Conflict, Jonathan Koppell

Jonathan GS Koppell

Global governance organizations (GGOs) are frequently maligned as both illegitimate and ineffective. With the growing prominence of entities that promulgate global rules governing trade, communications, finance, and transport, these shortcomings take on greater importance. This essay presents a theoretical framework to understand the challenge of legitimacy for GGOs. It argues that GGOs tend to face trade-offs between legitimacy and authority, but that widespread usages of these important terms conflate or confuse them and thus obscure critical issues in GGO politics. Once these terms are more clearly defined, we see more easily that GGOs must sometimes violate democratic norms, sacrificing equality …