Club governance and legitimacy: The perspective of old and rising powers on the G7 and the G20

Abstract

ABSTRACT Club governance is among the most contested of global governance approaches. This article investigates legitimacy evaluations of two informal governance clubs from the perspective of both old powers and rising powers. It examines how legitimate the G7/G8 and the G20 are perceived to be and which (de-)legitimation criteria are used in the context of these summit regimes, assessing how legitimacy evaluations in the media vary across these two settings, across different types of actors and over time. The article shows that rising powers challenge certain aspects of the global order more than old powers. While the criteria linked to output legitimacy, such as effectiveness, tend to be more prominent than criteria on input legitimacy, such as participation, the latter seem to be more important for rising powers than for old powers. This article contributes to the various bodies of literature on club governance, the legitimacy of international institutions and the role of rising powers in global governance.