Legitimacy in International Law and International Relations

Abstract

Over past decade, there has been an explosion of interest, both among international lawyers and international relations scholars, in legitimacy of international institutions. The issue of international legitimacy raises many important questions. Conceptually, what do we mean by “legitimacy” and what is its relation to other concepts such as legality, authority, obedience, power, self-interest, morality and justice? Normatively, what standards should we use to assess legitimacy of international institutions? Descriptively, what standards do different actors (government officials, international bureaucrats, civil society groups, and business) actually use in assessing legitimacy of international institutions? Finally, causally, what factors explain creation of institutions with normative legitimacy, wha factors explain why institutions are accepted as legitimate, and how much practical difference do beliefs about legitimacy make -- for example, for effectiveness and stability of an institution? This paper surveys international law and international relations literatures on these issues. Despite many areas of convergence between IL and IR literatures on legitimacy, there are also important differences. International relations scholars focus on legitimacy of international institutions rather than of international law. Although many international lawyers share this institutional orientation, some have attempted to develop a more specific theory of legal legitimacy, based on internal qualities of legal system (for example, whether rules are clear, prospective, and public, and whether they were adopted in conformity with legal system’s secondary rules about norm creation), rather than on political process by which rules were produced or their substantive outcomes. This concern with what Lon Fuller called the internal morality of law, has no counterpart among political scientists, who have shown little interest in legitimacy of international law as such.