The Law and Politics of International Legitimacy

The book examines the significance of the issue of political legitimacy at the international level, focusing on international law. It adopts a descriptive, critical and reconstructive approach. In order to do so, the book clarifies what political legitimacy is in general and in the context of international law. The book analyses how international law contributes to a sense of legitimacy through notions such as international membership, international rights holding, fundamental principles and hierarchy of rights holding, rightful conduct and international authority. In addition, the book stresses the serious limitations of legitimacy of international law and of the current international order that it contributes to regulate and manage. This leads the book to identify the conditions under which international order and international law could overcome their problems of legitimacy and become more legitimate. The book is inter-disciplinary in nature, mobilizing international law, political and legal theory, philosophy, history, and political science.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; Part I. Setting the Stage: 1. Political legitimacy as an intellectual journey; 2. Orders in transition and implications for political legitimacy; 3. The legitimacy-law nexus; Part II. Political Legitimacy and Theory of Politics: 4. Theory of politics and political legitimacy; 5. Political legitimacy as evaluation and judgment; 6. Implications for political legitimacy and the theory of legitimacy; Part III. The Question of Legitimacy at the International Level: 7. Political legitimacy: from the national to the international; 8. specificities of the international community and legitimacy; Part IV. Construction of Legitimacy in International Law: 9. Legitimacy and international membership; 10. Legitimacy and international rights holding; 11. Key principles of international law and hierarchy of rights holding; 12. International legitimacy and rightful conduct; 13. International legitimacy and international authority; Part V. International Legitimacy and Change: 14. International legitimacy as a system of reference and meaning; 15. Scope and depth of International legitimacy, modernity, and the west; 16. Change and international legitimacy; 17. Change of international order and legitimacy; 18. Change in international order and legitimacy; 19. Evaluation of the validity of international legitimacy; Part VI. Criticism and Reconstruction of the Legitimacy of International Law: 20. Elements of a critical history of international law; 21. Elements of a critical philosophy of international law; 22. Toward a more just international law; 23. From international legitimacy to global justice; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.