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Justification and legitimacy in globalcivil societyGraham Long aa School of Politics, Geography and Sociology , University ofNewcastle , Newcastle upon Tyne, UKPublished online: 03 May 2011.

To cite this article: Graham Long (2008) Justification and legitimacy in global civil society, Journalof Global Ethics, 4:1, 51-66, DOI: 10.1080/17449620701855361

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Justification and legitimacy in global civil society

Graham Long�

School of Politics, Geography and Sociology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

As some thinkers have sought in the concept of global civil society an ethically driven site ofdeliberation and even resistance, so others have criticized global civil society for its lack oflegitimacy and representativeness. This article attempts to answer these criticisms – atleast in part – by invoking a moral commitment to the value of justification. I argue thatthe idea of justification, when examined, offers us a particular understanding of legitimacywhich would be attainable for global civil society actors. The article begins by setting outthe case for concern about the legitimacy of global civil society. I then outline a certainunderstanding of justification, showing how a commitment to this conception provides botha response to critics of global civil society and an ethical baseline for humane actorswithin global civil society. I move on to trace the significance of the moral relevance ofjustification for actors’ strategies. Lastly, however, I highlight the difficulty of justificationin a diverse world. This is to say that the issues of legitimacy and strategy facing globalcivil society are only made more tractable, not dissolved, by an appeal to the importanceof justification.

Keywords: global civil society; legitimacy; justification; diversity

Introduction

Global civil society today is the site both of enormous diversity and tremendous challenges. The

agents central to positive visions of global civil society, notably networks of ethically concerned

people, aim to change the world. They campaign on behalf of and work towards a variety of import-

ant causes. These causes address some of the most important ethical issues facing the world today:

an end to poverty, resistance to economic globalization and environmental sustainability. For some

theorists, then, global civil society constitutes the opposition to imperialism, global capitalism and

war and a fundamental component in true global democracy.1 However, at the same time the notion

of global civil society faces conceptual and practical problems that arise from the diversity of actors

and motives present within it. It is not clear precisely who count as global civil society, what if any

ethical commitments unite it and what its role should be in either existing or ideal global politics.

This article focuses on one shortfall of global civil society highlighted by many theorists: its lack of

legitimacy, at least in the standard sense of that term. This lack of legitimacy poses a central

problem for normative accounts of global civil society: they become forms of morally objection-

able elite politics.2 I begin by offering an account of this shortfall as lying in the very nature of these

actors as ‘global’ and ‘civil’ – beyond traditional state-based democratic structures, but as sites

nonetheless of power and ethical responsibility.

I want to argue here that this shortfall can be met by a commitment on the part of global civil

society actors to justification – to giving ‘good reasons’ to others. In addition to bridging this

�Email: g.m.long@newcastle.ac.uk

ISSN 1744-9626 print/ISSN 1744-9634 online

# 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/17449620701855361

http://www.informaworld.com

Journal of Global Ethics

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legitimacy gap, justification can help to dissolve some problems of internal structure facing such

actors and provides a guide to strategy: how such organizations should go about achieving their

many ends.3 Also, importantly, it may serve to specify a baseline for ethical accounts of global

civil society. Thus, my article offers an argument for justification both as a response to a particu-

lar problem facing global civil society and as a larger commitment to be embraced by such

actors. In a broader sense it also aims to link questions of moral and political philosophy to

an examination of the issues facing actors in global civil society.

Global civil society is of course a contested term and I should begin by setting out my under-

standing of the concept in more detail. The basic definition I want to adopt here follows others in

starting from what global civil society is not – it is non-governmental or non-state activity (see,

for example, Keane 2003; Scholte 1999). Beyond that, given the way that the concept is put to

both normative and analytical use, there is a good deal of diversity in what might count as global

civil society.4 In its normative use the central actors of global civil society are taken to be net-

works of people, often in the form of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and transnational

social movements. However, empirically speaking, disagreements continue about whether

market or (para)military actors should be included in an analysis of global civil society.5

Within normative approaches a parallel debate goes on as to whether non-democratic, nationa-

listic or other potentially ‘morally problematic’ actors can be a part of the ethical community of

global civil society.6 I will not here attempt to solve these disagreements, although I hope that

my position, especially on the ethical usage of the term, becomes clearer as the article proceeds.

My normative definition of global civil society is a broad one. It incorporates transnational

social movements, NGOs and less formalized individual or socially embedded activism. Within

normative conceptions of global civil society thinkers have viewed the role and character of

global civil society in different ways (Baker 2002). Some thinkers identify global civil

society centrally with subaltern movements and resistance to globalization as a counter-hegemo-

nic ‘globalization from below’ (Falk 2000). Others have situated it within a liberal cosmopolitan

vision and noted the linkages with human rights discourses (Kaldor 2003, 46). It is not my inten-

tion here to understate the differences and counter-currents within and between such categories

or to deny the contrasting theoretical approaches to them.7 Nevertheless, it is important to

emphasize that these two visions share commitments, challenges and problems. For example,

both liberal cosmopolitans committed to global equality of opportunity and theorists of resist-

ance to globalization are committed to global socio-economic justice and respect for all

human beings, often expressed as a list of basic rights (see, for example, Gills 2000; Pogge

2002). And both kinds of accounts are accused of Utopianism, of treating global civil society

as a normative ‘project’ that fails to recognize the massive diversity of global civil society in

the real world (Kenny 2003, 133; Robinson 2003, 167–8). Finally, both face the problem I

address in this article, of the apparent legitimacy deficit of global civil society actors.

Not all civil society actors will be concerned about legitimacy (though this is compatible

with saying that they should be). My particular account of a normative vision of civil society

aims to show the importance of legitimacy (and hence, I argue, justification) to what I will

term humane actors in global civil society. By humane I mean actors whose purposes are at

least partly moral, showing a conscientious concern for others – a stipulation that I recognize

is broad and problematic. My adoption of the term serves a particular purpose for my argument:

it allows me to focus on the actors central to positive visions of global civil society whilst allow-

ing for the presence, in reality, of many others. It also aims to avoid (or at least postpone) the

difficult exercise of determining the unifying ethic, if any, of global civil society. Humane

actors who wield power in international politics have special reasons to be concerned with legiti-

macy, i.e. how others regard our exercise of power. On the other hand, for many actors in what

would count empirically as global civil society – such as drug dealers or, perhaps more

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controversially, terrorist networks – legitimacy is an irrelevant consideration. So, my account

speaks to a basically normative account of civil society as it ought to be. However, such an

account can sit alongside a recognition that there is more to global civil society in reality. It

is compatible to say, first, that the goal should be a global civil society composed only of

humane actors and, second, that justification might have instrumental value for all global

civil society actors. Lastly, my approach suggests that a commitment to justification and the

kind of legitimacy I outline ought to be one component of what is involved in being a

humane actor. That is, it might constitute one basic and relatively uncontroversial commitment

of civil society actors, regardless of otherwise diverse ethical agendas.

This article has four sections. The first outlines what I mean by legitimacy and sets out the

features of global civil society that explain the difficulty of attaining it. The second outlines a

commitment to justification as a way to answer this demand for legitimacy. The third follows

the implication of a commitment to justification for the strategies followed by global civil

society. The fourth stresses the difficulties and uncertainties in this solution.

Global civil society: the difficulty of legitimacy

I take it that legitimacy in its most basic sense concerns the recognition or acceptance of the

wielding of power. In particular I am concerned here with legitimacy in a normative sense,

i.e. as expressing a standard against which a regime or action can be judged.8 Legitimacy is a

problem in practice only to the extent that global civil society actors wield power in world poli-

tics. In areas where an actor has no power their legitimacy is moot. Questions about the legiti-

macy of actors in global civil society arise because global civil society actors increasingly wield

power in today’s world and because there are good reasons why we ought to want them to do so.

To make this case in more detail it is necessary to give a quick summary of both the nature

of this power and why we might think it a good thing that global civil society wields it. First,

then, the claim that global civil society is increasingly powerful in today’s world. Given the

amorphous nature of global civil society and of the kinds of power that it might exercise this

might seem a contentious claim, but it is one that I think can be made good. In particular,

many theorists note that a growth in the numbers and effectiveness of civil society movements

and their ability to transcend borders has accompanied rapid globalization.9 Thus, total member-

ship, aid funnelled through NGOs and the reach and dispersal of such organizations have all

increased through the 1990s to the present day (Kaldor 2003, 12). Simultaneously, activists

and commentators have noted the emergence of an inchoate anti-globalization movement

(Eschle 2005; Starr 2000). We can see the power of such actors more clearly by dividing it

into two broad elements. First, it consists partly in ‘agenda setting’ capacity – raising issues

in government and the public consciousness. This ‘communicative power’, the ability to influ-

ence discourses, will sometimes appear nebulous and at other times concretized.10 In its more

concrete forms this constitutes the ability to influence deliberation on important questions –

for example, the effects of anti-globalizsation protests or the presence of NGOs in debates

within the UN (Falk 2000, 43). In a more nebulous sense it shapes the terms of reference

within which such deliberation takes place – for example through the increasing normality of

the language of ‘human rights’. A second dimension involves the impact on people’s lives

directly – for example, the action of disaster relief organizations in the aftermath of natural dis-

asters (Etzioni 2004). Notably, this power sometimes takes on a quasi-governmental form.

NGOs work with, and in the place of, governments to effect change – particularly in what

we might term failed states.11 Thus, my first claim is that we should be concerned about the

legitimacy of global civil society to the extent that it impacts on people’s lives at the local

and global level.

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Supporters of global civil society see it as ideally wielding even more power, at least in the

absence of ‘good’ (both morally and practically speaking) global governance. For the more opti-

mistic theorists of global civil society in particular it counteracts destructive state hegemonies

and market forces, acting as a counterbalance to US imperialism and economic globalization

(see, for example, Falk 2000, Korten, Perlas, and Shiva 2006). Less radically, no one would

deny that actors in global civil society do indeed promote many humane causes, acting as a

check on dictatorship and a boost to deliberation, for example. Thus, it might be thought that

this kind of humane global civil society is straightforwardly a good thing and something we

need more of.12

However, the ends of global civil society are not my primary concern here. My worry con-

cerns the way that these actors in global civil society ‘do’ politics. In particular, as thinkers

(including those who support global civil society) have argued, they possess a legitimacy

deficit. In this section I distinguish between political and moral legitimacy. The problem for

global civil society is that the second need not imply the first. The first, and I think the core

meaning, is political and voluntarist: legitimacy rests on consent and so finds its source in demo-

cratic structures. Now, part of the appeal of global civil society lies in its value to the promotion

of politically legitimate government, i.e. it keeps a watch on the excesses of states (Baker 2002,

942). But global civil society itself, as I go on to outline, faces a legitimacy deficit in this sense.

The second moral sense sees legitimacy as moral rightfulness. This kind of legitimacy can easily

be claimed by the actors of global civil society. I will insist that the former conception of legiti-

macy remains important and that the moral diversity of global civil society makes appeals to the

latter problematic.

My core understanding of political legitimacy ties it to the idea of consent and, in particular,

structures that formalize that consent. The legitimate exercise of power in this account is one

voluntarily authorized by those subject to the power.13 This idea underpins idealized democratic

structures whereby the consent of the people confers legitimacy upon both the state generally

and a particular government. Empirically, real world ‘democratic’ states realize this goal intern-

ally only imperfectly and they may not achieve this goal in their external affairs at all. On theor-

etical counts, too, there are important objections and limitations to this account which I cannot

discuss in detail here. These perhaps fall into three camps. First, thinkers have charged that

consent is difficult to test or obtain, might be given for bad reasons or given in circumstances

which render it unfree (Simmons 1993, 218–69; Kann 1978). Whilst recognizing such concerns,

my focus here is less on these problems and more on the abstract question of good reasons for

consenting, which might make such issues more tractable.14 Second, the claim that justified

consent is necessary for legitimacy is itself a controversial one. Some theorists have opted for

accounts of state legitimacy that downplay consent in favour of stressing the instrumental

value of states (for example, as providers of security). Whilst I do not have space here to

address these accounts here, I am not alone in finding them unsatisfying (Simmons 1999;

Copp 1999, 32–6). In particular, I suggest below that the element of reasoned consent serves

important values, including a notion of respect. Lastly, some approaches regard legitimacy as

a mask for subjugation (see, for example, Foucault 1980, 96). Although I cannot explore this

charge fully, I would contend, as a minimum, that an approach which emphasizes reasoned

consent is less vulnerable in this regard than one which does not.

It might also be asked why global civil society should be subjected to a demand for legiti-

macy when the legitimacy of other global non-state actors that wield global power, such as cor-

porations, is not called into question. My response is three-fold. First, there are good grounds for

arguing that, to a greater extent, the legitimacy of such actors should be questioned. There are

strong arguments for the claim that all aspects of global governance should be subject to moral

(re-)evaluation, including a test of justification to those affected by it (Pogge 2002). Indeed, the

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claim that non-state actors must be held to account is central to some visions of global

civil society (see, for example, Gills 2000; Eschle 2005, 20–1). Second, whilst domestic civil

society ideally operates beneath the umbrella of a legitimate state, there is (I assume) no

comparable legitimate global system of governance setting the rules within which global civil

society ought to operate. Third, the actors of normative visions of global civil society, by claim-

ing to realize global democracy or speak for the unheard, carry a special burden in this regard.

All three claims, although more especially the second and third, are expanded below.

Global civil society does not easily fit the model of political legitimacy I outlined above.

The actors need not be accepted or approved of by those over whose destinies they have

power. As Chandler noted, ‘the power of the advocate rests on an entirely different basis to

that of an elected representative’, lacking an ‘independent basis of legitimacy’ (Chandler

2004, 333–4). In particular, we can note that the influence wielded by such actors need not

reflect, or be sanctioned by, popular or democratic will: this is the nature of the ‘pressure

group’ function of global civil society actors.15 Partly this lack of legitimacy reflects the pro-

blems of pressure groups generally. As thinkers of pluralist democracy have noted, pressure

groups do not unambiguously hold only benefits for democracy (Cohen and Rogers 1995,

40–2; Dahl 1982, ch. 3). But the problem for global civil society is deepened by virtue of

being global rather than bound to states. Domestic pressure groups perform their function

within the context of a democratic system: the mobilization that results is transmitted through

the electoral process. They sit within, and contribute to, a legitimate state structure (at least

ideally). The transnational nature of global movements means that they lack the same connection

to a democratic system (Anderson and Rieff 2004).16

It is precisely because of this feature that global civil society can be counterpoised against

dominant forces or discourses. Thus, global civil society’s position outside traditional mass poli-

tics is one feature of its appeal. Thinkers express concern about civil society actors being ‘tamed’

when included (or subsumed, as some would argue) inside state politics (Baker 2002; Kaldor

2003). However, at the same time we can worry about the non-democratic power exerted by

NGOs. The influence exerted by advocates outside formal democratic systems can frustrate

the emancipatory or humane goals of global civil society. Thus, enthusiasts for the normative

agenda of global civil society often worry about the influence of transnational corporations as

potentially corruptive of the political process.17 However, this problem of political illegitimacy

is not confined to undesirable actors: instead, it is pervasive and arises from the very nature of

global civil society. Actors in global civil society influence policy, the terms and character of

debate and opinion and people’s lives (both directly and indirectly through these other func-

tions), but they do so without the need for a clear popular mandate.18

One response is to highlight the role of global civil society in contributing to a larger realm

of democratic deliberation. In this account global civil society enhances democracy through

giving voices to those previously unheard in deliberations. Thus, Kaldor argued that the function

of global civil society is more deliberative than representative. This is to say that global civil

society cannot represent the people of the world in the way that states represent their citizens.

Nevertheless, humane actors often claim to be advocates on behalf of – act and speak for the

interests of – excluded or marginalized groups. Thus they can claim that the concerns of

these groups authorize or legitimate their presence and politics (Kaldor 2003, 95, 140–1).

They aim to give voice to the unheard, i.e. they acquire their legitimacy from groups that do

not, but should, have a say. This sense of legitimacy depends on a certain notion of represen-

tation, i.e. the claim to accurately raise the perspectives of the unheard. Thus, such actors

have a particular need for internal political legitimacy; even if they exist outside traditional

democratic structures, they – through this function of representing the interests of those other-

wise excluded – constitute a structure themselves. The problem put in these terms is that, as

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Colas noted, NGOs ‘do not currently possess the requisite degree of legitimacy and accountability

to be considered as democratic representatives in globalized political communities’ (Colas

2002, 163).

The role of global civil society here is both deliberative and representative, i.e. it contributes

to deliberation through accurately communicating the authentic concerns of those it claims to

speak for. However, there are genuine difficulties in establishing a true dialogue between

those whose interests are to be represented and those doing the representation. Many transna-

tional civil society networks do not enjoy democratic internal structures and consultation with

or participation of those whose concerns are to be represented is limited (Scholte 1999, 30–1).

Chandler, for example, cited the case of protestors at World Trade Organisation talks in

Cancun, who claimed to represent 100,000,000 farmers (Chandler 2004, 327). It is not clear

how such claims can be made good: the focus here must lie on the procedures actors use to

ensure internal democracy and advocacy of people’s authentic concerns. These are as multifar-

ious as global civil society itself and one area where a concern for justification, I will argue, can

help ease worries of legitimacy.

A second sense of legitimacy is much less obviously political. Indeed, it could be suggested

that global social movements aim to reshape legitimacy in the mould of this second account,

away from a state focus (Turner 1998). This uses the term as synonymous with ‘fair’ or

‘moral, all things considered’.19 This more general sense makes an appeal to the righteousness

of our agenda or action. In this account the link to consent is much less straightforward, although

it might be founded in what others ought to agree with, as I discuss below.20 Thus it is possible

for something that is politically illegitimate to nevertheless be morally legitimate. I do not want

to deny that this account has some force, and it is often appealed to by states as well as non-state

actors, although not always justifiably.21 Furthermore, I do not want to deny that many actors in

humane global civil society will be legitimate in this sense precisely because the causes they

promote are (I assume) unquestionably good ones. Thus, aiming to end global hunger or

slavery straightforwardly confers this kind of legitimacy. However, two things should be

noted about this second, broader sense of legitimacy. First, it does not remove the problem of

political legitimacy. Even though the cause is good, we can still be dissatisfied with the way

this end is achieved to the extent it bypasses democratic legitimation. Thus, applying a standard

of moral legitimacy just says that, all things considered, the advancement of a cause can be good

despite a lack of political legitimacy, i.e. the end might justify the means.

However, the real problem with appeals to this sense of moral legitimation is the diversity of

global civil society. Global civil society ‘tends towards heterogeneity and diversity, even tension

and contradiction’ (Falk 2000, 55). Part of this diversity is ethical, i.e. agents hold a variety of

conflicting ethical agendas.22 Correspondingly, a central commitment of global civil society

should be to ethical heterogeneity: to the acknowledgement of a global diversity of world-

views and, some thinkers argue, a degree of respect for this diversity (Keane 2003, 202).23

Even within the actors I want to dub ‘humane’ there exists a huge variety of conflicting

causes and concerns, and this will constitute an important limit to ‘rightfulness’ as a source

of legitimacy. Stressing moral legitimacy here might leave us with plenty of cases where a par-

ticular course of action and its opposite are both morally legitimate as far as their proponents are

concerned. Thus this appeal cannot solve the problem for the global civil society theorist.

In this section I have sketched an account of the problem for global civil society. It wields

power in many ways, in the service of many causes, but outside traditional democratic frame-

works. In particular, it often wields power on behalf of the unheard and so carries an extra

demand to accurately and fairly represent their concerns. In the next section I consider a com-

mitment to justification as a (partial) solution to this problem; a commitment that yields both

inward- and outward-facing legitimacy.

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Legitimacy and justification

In this section I argue that justification can help to address the shortfall of legitimacy faced by

global civil society. It provides for potential political legitimacy and helps to guarantee a degree

of authentic representation of interests. With regard to legitimacy, justification can be regarded

as the exercise of providing reasons that would motivate consent if there were structures of legit-

imation present. With regard to representation, the constant justification of the content of our

advocacy to those we claim to speak for offers a guarantee of an authentic representation of con-

cerns. I outline these two ideas in more detail shortly. However, talk of justification raises,

straightaway, two questions. The first concerns the concept of justification: what precisely

does it involve? The second concerns the link between justification, legitimacy and represen-

tation – how and to what extent does it confer these properties? The answer to these two ques-

tions are interrelated, for only a certain kind of justification, I want to suggest, can confer

legitimacy or guarantee representation.

We should understand justification as a constant exercise of engagement, a ‘proof’ of the

value of our intentions and concerns (and how they are to be carried through) directed at

others. It should be offered to all interested parties, although perhaps to two in particular:

first, those who disagree and, second, those that my position claims to speak for.24 The

general notion of justification as the giving of good reasons for others to accept our beliefs or

actions is, I take it, uncontroversial. For my purposes here both the justificatory and motivational

facets of our reasons are important, i.e. reasons both motivate us to act and give us an account of

why we should (this may, of course, amount to the same thing). The controversy over accounts

of justification arises when deciding what counts as a ‘good reason’. Here I want to suggest that,

at least for the purposes of actors in global civil society, we can specify the kind of justification

they should aim for along three dimensions. It should be (a) internalist (at least to the extent I

discuss below) rather than externalist, (b) actual rather than hypothetical and (c) compelling

rather than ‘reasonably rejectable’. Let me discuss these three features in turn.

With regard to the first distinction, the strongest kind of ‘internalist’ criterion demands that

we treat as good reasons only those which are motivating for others given their commitments as

they are. In contrast, the strongest ‘externalist’ account of justification holds that whether a reason

is good or not is an objective, external matter; on this account someone who fails to acknowledge

such an objective good reason is irrational.25 I do not want to defend an internalist account of jus-

tification as superior to an externalist account except on instrumental grounds, i.e. its contribution

to solving the puzzle of legitimacy. As I will argue shortly, internalist justification is linked to

consent, and thus political legitimacy, in a way that externalist justification is not. This division

between a good reason for the agent as they are and good reasons that the agent ought to perceive

underpins the second distinction between actual and hypothetical justification. Hypothetical jus-

tification is what people should accept ‘were they rational or reasonable’. The externalist account

allows us to be satisfied with a situation in which were agent X to accept reasons A, B and C,

which are all good ones, he would accept policy P. This would be an important conclusion,

despite the fact that agent X did not in fact accept these reasons, for this kind of hypothetical jus-

tification allows us to proceed beyond the impasse of persistent diversity. Actual justification, on

the other hand, does not. Actual justification demands that agent X accept A, B and C in order for

P to be justified.26 In the externalist account the important thing is not whether people actually

consent, but whether they could, would or should. Thus the distinction between actual and

hypothetical reasons is closely linked to the distinction between internalist and externalist

accounts of reasoning and is perhaps best viewed as a way of explicating that difference.27

Although I will suggest that the purpose of global civil society actors is best served by

internalist and actual justification, I do not wholly want to deny the intuition underpinning

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the externalist account: that sometimes people can be irrational in rejecting the reasons we (i.e.

other agents) give. My first method of accommodating this thought is to insist that justification

need be only weakly internalist: by this I mean that the reasons we give to others should be at

least accessible to them, i.e. capable of finding a foothold in their world-views. For pragmatic

purposes at least our justifications should not end with what Scanlon called the ‘first order’ uni-

versality of our reasons (Scanlon 1998, 372–3) – their appearance to us as good or bad for

everyone. Thus the kind of justification I am advocating does not just consist of the reasons

that are good enough for me, they must at least potentially appeal to others. A further response

to this intuition is represented by the third demand, that the reasons we are looking for should

ideally be compelling ones. Compelling reasons are ones that others would be irrational to

reject. As I have characterized them here, externalist or hypothetical justifications are necess-

arily compelling and these are compelling regardless of whether an agent happens to finds

them so. On the internalist account we must look for reasons that an agent finds compelling,

ones that demand their assent on pain of irrationality. Such a ‘weak internalism’, that

demands only the accessibility of reasons, allows for cases where reasons are improperly

rejected, where an agent ought to find them compelling but does not. It also recognizes that

not all reasons are equally good or strong ones and demands that we seek the strongest.28

Sketched in such a way, the account of justification I offer here is neither entirely internalist

nor externalist. Whilst committed to an internalist constraint it recognizes the relevance of a par-

ticular kind of hypothetical justification, one that could accompany the improper rejection of

reasons. The scope for such hypothetical justification is not large, however. It is triggered

only when an agent’s actual commitments should lead them to recognize the force of a

reason but they nevertheless fail to do so. My account is also schematic in form. It is a much

larger exercise to outline the content of such reasons, and one that I cannot attempt here.

Partly such reasons could be generated by the reflexive application of what might cautiously

be termed general standards of reasoning, such as consistency and coherence. However,

reasons will also be discovered through debate and deliberation, as I discuss below.

With this rough account of justification in place, we can see how giving these kinds of

reasons provides a commitment to the value of consent and thus represents a source of political

legitimacy. Justification and political legitimacy, I take it, are not the same – as David Archard

pointed out in a recent article, a concern for consent need not generate an obligation to justify our

political action (Archard 2005). Nevertheless, the two are related, since the kind of justification I

have outlined above aims at the unforced agreement that constitutes the best kind of consent and

the best source of democratic legitimacy: it requires us to give reasons that could, or perhaps

should, make others agree with me. A constant commitment to giving others good reasons for

consenting lessens the legitimacy gap; it in effect says that ‘if we could participate inside struc-

tures of consent, we do have the reasons that could properly motivate your agreement with our

view’. My idea here is that this hypothetical legitimacy offers the promise of reasoned consent

and a commitment to its importance. Now, it is only actual and at least weakly internalist jus-

tification that allows the humane actor to insist that they really are concerned with people’s

consent. External or hypothetical justification does not engage with agents in the same kind

of way – it removes the sense of voluntary or consensual agreement here, since justification

can exist despite the reasons others may have. Furthermore, the claim offered by models of

hypothetical justification that ‘if you were rational you would agree with us’ is one that can

easily ring hollow in a situation of deep diversity – such as global civil society or global politics

generally.

Similarly, directing a commitment of justification inwards, to those our advocacy is on

behalf of, addresses internal gaps of representation. It insists that through giving reasons for

the content of our advocacy, those represented could be reassured that their concerns were

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being communicated faithfully. First, one particular implication of internalist justification is the

demand that we try to understand people’s points of view and take account of this in our reasons,

i.e. ‘speak their language’ to a certain extent. We cannot guarantee offering a good reason to X

without understanding what would count as a good reason for X. This feature helps humane

actors avoid the charge that they are superimposing commitments onto the subjects of their

advocacy: justification demands an understanding of those we claim to represent.

Second, this kind of justification also helps to assuage worries of representation because it

expresses a certain idea of respect. Here I want to suggest that simply by attempting to justify our

position to others we are according them a certain kind of respect that would be absent were we

to simply coerce or act without offering an account of ourselves. The idea that we engage

seriously with other people’s beliefs is what we might require, as a minimum, to count as

respecting those beliefs. Respect for beliefs does not involve indifference, or avoidance, but

understanding and engagement. It is also respectful of persons in two senses. First, in giving

them reasons it respects others as epistemic agents, capable of forming and revising their own

world-views. Second, in attempting to win others’ consent we express the idea that respecting

persons involves not imposing outcomes on them without justification.29

Because of these two elements a concern for justification promotes a mechanism of self-

testing on the part of advocates. They must be sure that they could justify their agenda to

those whose interests they represent.30 This commitment to justification can be realized pragma-

tically in many ways. It does not require mirror representation nor does it insist that the concerns

of the unheard, for example, can only be presented by themselves. Instead, it can animate many

different internal structures in practice and so speaks to the problems of internal structure and

governance in a way that is accessible to global civil society organizations no matter how

large or small. However, as a guiding principle it offers a way in which the organizational

imperatives of internal representation can be understood.

This account of the way in which a commitment to justification expresses certain moral

values has a further consequence: it suggests justification as a relatively ‘thin’ commitment

that can unite humane actors in global civil society regardless of their different ethical

agendas. Keane, for example, talked of an ‘ethic of civility’ as the normative minimum for an

ethical conception of global civil society. He wrote, ‘it is as if global civil society requires

each of its participants or potential members to sign a contract: to acknowledge and to

respect the principle of global civil society as a universal ethical principle that guarantees

respect for their moral differences’ (Keane 2003, 202). One of the advantages of this account

of justification is that it can be seen as specifying precisely this minimum. It is the kind of

respect we can ask of people given a diversity of world-views and ethical commitments.31

It should now be clear why only ‘weakly internalist’ justification will fulfil these roles and

why compelling and actual justification is ideal. Attempts at weakly internalist justification

necessitate offering reasons to gain consent in a way in which externalist or hypothetical justi-

fication need not. Of course, the act of giving these reasons is in a sense hypothetical: the

concern is with reasons that would or could properly justify consent in circumstances that

allowed that consent to be expressed and verified. However, the justifications offered are not

purely hypothetical ones: they must possess a link to the values, commitments and beliefs of

those I am justifying myself to. It is because of this link that such justification should prompt

assent. In the external account of justification, in contrast, the justification we offer need not gen-

erate assent (even though we maintain that it ought). In a situation of diversity, and given the

commitment of theorists of global civil society to moral diversity, the externalists’ appeals to

objective or ‘god’s eye’ reasons, independently of what people believe, are difficult to make

good. Internalist justifications – including the hybrid or weak internalism I have sketched

here – instead necessitate an exercise in understanding others and expressing respect for

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them. An objection to this conception of justification is that it will be very difficult to achieve.

This objection has some force. Compelling internalist justification will indeed be hard to come

by, and this is something I discuss in more detail in the fourth section of the article.

However, there is a sense in which the success of any given justification is not really what is

at issue here. Since even if a justification is non-compelling, the conscientious exercise of

attempting to find justifications still carries value in the ways I have outlined above. The com-

mitment to the importance of consent and to the measure of respect that it offers lies in the exer-

cise of engagement, the preparedness to offer reasons that would gain consent. These, to my

mind, are the source of the legitimating power of justification. To be sure this path to legitimacy

is, in a sense, moral. It is tied to the importance of respect and consent on the basis of unforced

agreement and represents a commitment to the kinds of reasons that satisfy these considerations.

However, it imports little substantive moral content and instead, through its relation to consent,

has a clear connection to political legitimacy.32

Justification and strategy

The above analysis suggests that actors in global civil society can narrow the legitimacy deficit

that they face by embracing a constant concern for justification, regardless of other goals that

they pursue. In this section I want to pick up the idea that an emphasis on justification also

has implications for how they go about pursuing these goals. One immediate consequence is

that if justification indeed accords civil society actors some legitimacy, it enables them to main-

tain a distance from states and their democratic systems as formal structures of legitimation: they

are not compelled to seek validation through the state or through mass politics. However, this

should not be taken to mean, for reasons I outline here, that there is no need for strategies

that engage with state actors or with their public: the strategies of global civil society must

instead focus on interaction with these elements. To suggest a constant concern for justification

is to suggest that the morally best strategy for actors in global civil society to pursue is a justi-

ficatory one, in the sense of relying centrally on the offering of reasons to others that could

motivate agreement.

What would justification as a strategy involve? Although I cannot comment here on speci-

fics, I want to highlight some general elements. First, justification places the emphasis on dia-

logue and debate. It is through these means that good reasons are discovered and invoked

and, hence, others convinced. In particular, justification will require engagement with the argu-

ments and forums of those opposed to us. I take it also that a justification to be successful will

involve not just a critique but also the outline of an alternative. It will need to respond to the

demand ‘so what should we do instead?’ and so must be at least partly constructive.

Justification as a means to achieve a goal is a narrower practice than either persuasion or

pressure. Both persuasion and pressure, I take it, might involve giving reasons for changing

one’s mind other than ‘good’ ones. Thus they might involve appeals to the emotions in ways

that bypass rational assessment or appeals to interests that might improperly sway people’s cal-

culations. This is not to deny that our emotions and interests can ever constitute good reasons for

acting, but instead to insist that they do not always do so. Our emotions, in particular, are impor-

tantly linked to our moral judgements in the sense that they can help yield both moral reasons

and moral motivation.33 However, there will be limits at which appeals to the heart, rather than

the head, constitute manipulation. When such appeals attempt to subvert a person’s evaluative

capacity they no longer manifest respect for persons and their beliefs. Furthermore, to the extent

that humane actors have moral agendas, appeals to a person’s self-interest – something that I

take morality to stand, at least in part, in a relation of opposition or regulation to – may well

be unhelpful.34

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This should not be taken to say that persuasion and pressure, or even coercion, never have a

place in the strategies of humane global civil society. Instead, an emphasis on justification says

something about the conditions under which such strategies could be employed to supplement

justification, most obviously in cases where good justifications are resisted. As I have suggested,

it is possible for people to irrationally reject arguments that they ought to find compelling. Where

justification is resisted in this kind of way other means may well become open to consideration.35

However, the demand for internalist and actual justification creates a barrier to arrogance. It

stops us from assuming that since people disagree with us they must be irrational and so

merit a manipulative or coercive response. If I am correct to draw a link between justification

and legitimacy then the setting aside of justification has costs for the actor involved which

cannot be ignored. I do not want to argue that a concern for justification should determine the

strategy of global civil society actors in such cases, since many other moral and non-moral

factors will also be crucial. Nevertheless, a primary focus on justification suggests certain con-

straints on the means employed.

One route for global civil society actors to follow here is to establish a set of criteria –

perhaps modelled upon the principles underpinning just war theory – to govern the resort to

manipulative or coercive means. Such criteria would reflect consideration of the justice of the

cause advanced, a notion of proportionality between the importance of the ends and the

means to be considered and a notion of last resort: that every other means had been considered

but would all be ineffective. The strength of the justification underpinning the cause in question

would operate in the background of such an account, influencing when such criteria would count

as met.

The difficulty of justification

I have suggested here that a concern for justification can help narrow the legitimacy gap facing

actors in global civil society. Humane actors should be attracted to justification, in particular, as

a relatively minimal moral commitment, and one that can also guide the strategy of actors.

However, there are limitations to what such an approach can achieve.

We can begin by noting that approaches to global problems are characterized by persistent

disagreement, i.e. disagreement that resists resolution. This is simply a reflection of the diversity –

of world-views, of values, of weighting of values – that the global civil society theorist wishes

to honour. This diversity will raise two problems for the kind of emphasis on justification that I

have outlined. First, my loose account of ‘weakly internalist’ justification allows for cases where

compelling justifications could be wrongly rejected. Thus, some of this disagreement will persist

despite our compelling justifications, because of the strong interests or biases at stake. This kind

of disagreement will challenge our commitment to justification: it is, as I note above, one case

where we might consider strategies beyond a justificatory one. However, second, there are surely

other cases of disagreement where compelling justification would be hard to come by at all. One

way to treat such disagreement is to characterize it as reasonable. This is to say that one side

could not clearly be shown to be at fault by standards accessible to everyone. One influential

account of such disagreement and what follows from it has been given by John Rawls. He out-

lined a set of factors, termed the ‘burdens of judgement’, which lead us to expect such reasonable

divergence in belief (Rawls 1993, 54–8), including such elements as the different assessment

and weighting of evidence arising from different life experiences. In these kinds of cases the

problem for global civil society actors is that the best kind of justification – that which

compels assent – will be impossible to come by. Furthermore, the extent of reasonable disagree-

ment will itself be subject to such disagreement. Whether someone’s justifications rest purely on

bias or impermissible interest, the strength of their reasons and the strength of our reasons are

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questions that will all be difficult to determine. Justification, in this model, is itself systematically

exposed to disagreement, lack of clarity and resultant grey areas.

We can develop this analysis in two ways, both of which make such an admission less

damning. The first is to note that in cases like this a commitment to justification raises the possi-

bility of self-criticism. Actors will need to examine the justifications they are offering, and

understand the views of their opponents in order to determine, as best they can, which of the

two scenarios above best match the case at hand. This allowance for self-doubt or self-criticism

on the part of global civil society actors need not be viewed as a negative development: humility

can be thought of as a constituent of civility. The second is to insist, as I mention above, that the

sensitivity to justification is important as a commitment in its own right, independent of the dif-

ficulties encountered in practising it.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that a commitment to justification helps global civil society actors

address problems of political legitimacy and representation and also gives a certain outline of the

strategies by which such actors should aim to achieve their ends. The account of justification I

have sketched makes a certain claim to a kind of legitimacy and representation of interests.

Critics of global civil society ask how global civil society can possibly be legitimate when it

exists outside a democratic system (Anderson and Rieff 2004, 30). A constant concern with jus-

tification is, I have suggested, one answer. However, the limits of the power of justification have

also been highlighted: in a situation of diversity, to follow Gaus, it will be difficult to compel-

lingly justify much (Gaus 1996, 152, 179). Thus, whilst this essay offers one potential response

to the problem of legitimacy, it must be modest about the power of that response.

Although I have attempted to show here how the legitimacy deficit facing global civil society

could be eased, my argument has not tackled the question of the relationship between global civil

society and global democratic governance directly. One alternative way to resolve the lack of pol-

itical legitimacy I have been concerned with here is to situate global civil society within a formal

model of global democratic institutions, such as that proposed by Held or Archibugi. In such an

approach demands for legitimacy would not be the business of global civil society but instead

of a formal democratic structure. It remains to be determined how far this kind of vision of

global civil society ‘from above’ could accommodate the role of global civil society as a challenge

and check on political authority – including global political authority – and how far it would

involve the ‘wasting away’ of global civil society in its current diverse form.36 These larger ques-

tions go beyond the scope of this article. The account of justification I have offered does at least

respond to the challenge implied by this line of thought, that without a global democratic system

global civil society must be illegitimate and unrepresentative. Further to this, an emphasis on jus-

tification provides a commonality between the commitments of civil society actors and institutions

of global governance. This might serve in the long run both to render the two more compatible and

to influence the character of the global institutions that result.

One sobering implication of my account is that as issues become narrower and the focus

more practical, so the scope for reasonable disagreement may well increase. This is to say

that the combination of justification and disagreement I sketched in section four is especially

problematic for questions of practical focus. Disagreement between world-views and values

within global civil society will be amplified as such values are applied in practice, partly

because questions of weighting and balancing will become more urgent. Thus when it comes

to questions of where the priorities of global civil society should lie we should expect disagree-

ment even between actors with similar goals and commitments. It is here that the civility of

global civil society will be tested the hardest. The further global civil society actors move

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towards questions of policy, the more disagreement they must be sensitive to. However, we

should maintain that this sensitivity is a valuable attribute rather than a weakness. It could

serve to differentiate the humane actors of global civil society from the strategic and dogmatic

imperatives of state politics and capitalist accumulation. The capacity for reflection and doubt is

precisely where global civil society may capture the moral high ground.

This is not to say that justification ceases to be helpful as a commitment and guide for the

actor in such circumstances, however. As I have outlined here, the task for global civil society is

to ward against taking the form of an unaccountable politics that trades in influence rather than

argument. An affirmation of the value of justification protects global civil society from becoming

such a set of distant elites. Instead, it portrays humane global civil society as constantly engaged

in dialogue with itself, with those opposed to it and with those it champions. Providing a justi-

fication, on the account I have offered here, involves respectful and critical engagement with

others in the search for reasons that could generate principled consent. My analysis of legitimacy

suggests that the appeal of justification as an ethical foundation for global civil society lies as

much in this journey as the destination.

Notes

1. See, for example, Anheier, Glasius, and Kaldor (2003), Dryzek (2000), Korten, Perlas, and Shiva(2006), Falk (2000), Gills (2000) and Kaldor (2003) for versions of these positive claims.

2. This issue has been identified by a broad range of global civil society theorists, for example Baker(2002), Colas (2002), Chandler (2004, 2005), Anderson and Rieff (2004), Kaldor (2003, 100) andKeane (2003, 145).

3. These, I take it, are major practical issues for global civil society actors. Later sections of this paperaim to speak to these concerns.

4. As one example see Nielsen’s (1995) advocacy of a Gramscian approach that separates civil society fromthe state, the market and the private sphere. For any such account locating civil society as distinct, whencivil society actors are structurally connected to all of these other spheres, remains a significant challenge.

5. See, for example, Turner’s (1998) discussion of these issues. Different theorists offer different exclu-sions: Keane (2003) excluded market actors, whilst Lipschutz (2005) saw global civil society as man-ifested partly through markets.

6. For example, Diamond (1994) excluded non-democratic actors; Kaldor (2003, 107) similarlyexcluded movements that are not ‘voluntary and participatory’.

7. For a recent examination of such approaches see Eschle and Stammers (2004).8. My use, therefore, is distinct from the ‘empirical’ sense in which legitimacy is a matter of the con-

gruent beliefs of the ruled (Weber 1947). This is not to say, however, that people’s actual beliefsare unimportant for a normative account of legitimacy, as I illustrate in my account below.

9. See, for example, the data in Anheier, Glasius, and Kaldor (2004, 297–322).10. I take the idea of communicative power from Dryzek (2000, 131).11. This has been referred to as global civil society’s role in new public management (Anheier, Glasius,

and Kaldor 2003, 8). For a discussion of this in practice, see Stewart and van der Geest (1995). Myaccount here is only schematic. For a more detailed account of the way these two kinds of power areexercised see, for example, the discussion in Gordenker and Weiss (1996).

12. This is not to deny that there are doubters. Lipschutz, for example, stressed that global civil societyultimately helps to ‘legitimate and reproduce’ a global neo-liberal regime (Lipschutz 2005, 748).However, Lipschutz did not deny that it can also change that regime and ameliorate some of its effects.

13. For one prominent account of such a model of legitimacy see Waldron (1987).14. In particular I am concerned in this article with claims to legitimacy in an arena where the process of

gaining consent faces immense practical difficulties. My argument is slightly divorced from such prac-tical problems and focuses instead on the value of a commitment to consent.

15. Similar objections were also noted by Baker (2002, 934–6), Colas (2002, 2003), Clark (2003) andWalker (1994, 675). Anderson and Rieff wrote of NGOs:

they do not stand for office. Citizens do not vote for this or that civil society organisation as theirrepresentatives because, in the end, NGOs exist to reflect their own principles, not to represent aconstitutency to whose interests and desires they must respond. (Anderson and Rieff 2004, 29)

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16. In a way this makes global civil society actors loci of greater responsibility, as they take on expandedroles of advocacy and representation.

17. Falk, for example, noted the ‘cooptation of state power’ by transnational market forces (Falk 2000, 49).18. I do not want to claim that this problem affects civil society actors alone. Instead, it characterizes both

the politics of democratic states and market actors, for example. However, my concerns here are withglobal civil society in particular.

19. Thus, Kaldor noted that civil society actors possess ‘moral authority’, although she too worried overthe composition of such actors (Kaldor 2003, 100).

20. This second sense of legitimacy is straightforwardly a claim to moral justification. I am in agreementwith Simmons (1999) here that something is lost if we conflate legitimacy and justification. Never-theless, this is consistent with saying that consent is crucial to legitimacy (as I do in this section)and justification is crucial to the best kind of consent (as I argue in the next).

21. For example, the sense that morality confers legitimacy on actions has been appealed to in justifica-tions for both unilateral NATO action in Kosovo and the most recent invasion of Iraq. The deep dis-agreement that followed, particularly over the second, highlights the limitations of this sense of morallegitimacy.

22. See, for example, Walker (1988, 109) and Keane (2003, 201). Of course, the scale of this diversity isrelated to our definition of global civil society: the more normative the definition, the more scope thereis for the exclusion of some conflicting claims. There are dangers, however, to adopting a high nor-mative standard for what counts as ‘true’ global civil society. First, this risks weakening the connec-tion with a factual or analytical use of ‘global civil society’ as a phenomenon characterized bydiversity. Second, it would simply shift the controversy to one over whether such a standard coulditself be justified.

23. This question of whether there is an ethical cut-off point for global civil society remains a contestedone, and it is one where I think a consideration of justification is relevant, as I discuss below.

24. The reason for the first group is that justification, as a ‘proof’ of our position, is linked to the resolutionof disagreement. The second constituency, as I will go on to discuss, deserve a justification by virtueof us claiming to speak for them.

25. I draw my account here partly from Gerald Gaus’ discussion (see, for example, Gaus 1996, 32–5).26. I develop the distinction between actual and hypothetical justification from Archard (2005, 2).27. The link between hypothetical justification and hypothetical consent – another idea often invoked in

discussions of legitimacy – is not straightforward. Hypothetical consent (my consent in a hypotheticalcircumstance X, treated as a reason to confer legitimacy on a regime) can constitute an actual justi-fication, in the sense in which I use ‘actual’ here. As an example, consider Rawls’ use of a hypotheticalcontract apparatus as a way of systematizing and extending intuitions about justice. In this way, thehypothetical contract here forms part of an actual, internalist justification (where successful) of Rawls’theory of justice (Rawls 1973).

28. The justification I am talking about here need not be public in a Rawlsian sense, couched in a set ofreasons that everyone must recognize in their capacity as equal citizens (Rawls 1993). It can instead beradically particular, addressing distinctive and diverse components of people’s frameworks. In prac-tice I imagine that both kinds will be involved.

29. This is a claim characteristic of contemporary ‘political’ liberalism, common to thinkers such asRawls (1993), Larmore (1996) and Habermas (1996). However, the appeal to the desirability ofrespecting others is much wider and I do not take it to be especially contentious.

30. As expressed here this is a reason, for example, for aid agencies to give an account of their actions tothose they purport to help. In a recent article Leif Wenar has denied that downward accountability, inthe sense of being held to account by those to whom the action is directed, is intrinsically valuable(Wenar 2005). In contrast, my account here suggests a reason to accord accountability significantmoral value.

31. In this sense, justification constitutes a global version of the kind of account of reasonableness thatmarks political liberal accounts of diverse societies. However, to draw this link with liberal accountsof respect is not to insist that the agenda of global civil society should be a liberal one.

32. Whilst accepting that the reasons for using an account that links justification to consent and consent tolegitimacy are partly moral ones, this does not translate easily into the claim that my apparently volun-tarist theory cannot escape a rationalist foundation (a charge made, for example, by Lovett 2004). Notleast, (a) I do not view the dichotomy Lovett draws between voluntarist and rationalist positions asencompassing all possibilities and (b) much will depend on how the notion of rationalism isconceptualized.

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33. See, for example, Carol Gould’s account of empathetic solidarity as a component of the foundation forhuman rights (Gould 2005).

34. They are unhelpful partly because self-interest offers a shifting and unstable ground for support ofideals and partly because it provide a force that might wear down those ideals to the point atwhich they did not constrain our self-interest.

35. The analysis we offer of global politics will have moral import here. If, for example, global politics isdetermined entirely by power relations immune to non-interest-based justifications then there will be astronger argument for employing persuasion and, perhaps, coercion. For the purposes of this paper Iremain neutral on this large and contested question.

36. See, for example, Baker (2002, 930–1), Colas (2005) and Chandler (2005) for a discussion of thesequestions.

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