Dominik U. Niemann
1679961CONTESTING THE LEGITIMACY OF
TRANSNATIONAL REGIMES:
THE POWER OF
G
LOBAL
C
ONTESTATION
N
ETWORKS
Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Political Science: International Organisation
in the
Institute of Political Science Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences under Supervision of Dr. Hilde van Meegdenburg
Second Reader: Dr. Rebekah Tromble Wordcount: 9.689
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Abbreviations ... ii
Figures ... ii
Abstract ... iii
Introduction ... 1
1. Background and Problem Statement: ... 2
2. Theoretical Framework ... 5
2.1 Organisations, Institutions, Regimes and Networks within the Global Political System ... 6
2.1.1 Organisations, Institutions & Regimes... 6
2.1.2 Networks ... 7
2.2 Conceptual Levels in Global Politics ... 8
2.3 Global Contestation Networks ... 9
2.4 Contractual Authority as the Social Foundation of Institutional Legitimacy ... 11
2.4.1 The Intersubjective and Normative Nature of Institutional Legitimacy ... 12
2.4.2 Contractual Authority and Legitimacy ... 12
2.4.3 Substantive and Procedural Legitimacy ... 13
2.5 The Power of Contestation ... 14
2.5.1 Power within and beyond Structures ... 14
2.5.2 Power and Discourse ... 15
3. Research Design ... 17
4. Findings ... 18
4.1 The FridaysForFuture Movement ... 18
4.2 Identifying the Contestative Discourse of the FFFM ... 19
4.2.1 Exclusion of the Youth ... 19
4.2.1 Systemic Inability ... 20
4. Concluding Remarks ... 22
Bibliography ... 24
Annex ... 32
Abbreviations
COP24 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference
FFFM FridaysForFuture Movement
GCN Global Contestation Network
INGO International Nongovernmental Organisation
MNC Multinational Corporation
TAN Transnational Advocacy Network
TPA Transnational Professional Associations
UN United Nations
Figures
Figure 1: Dynamics of legitimisation as a two-level and semi-direct process ... 3 Figure 2: Dynamics of legitimisation as a two-level, semi-direct and direct process through Global
Contestation Networks ... 4
Figure 3: The three conceptual levels of political collaboration in global politics ... 9 Figure 4: Dynamics of legitimisation and contestation on the conceptual levels of International,
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Abstract
Institutional legitimacy within studies of international relations is seen as a crucial element to the development and effectiveness of transnational regimes. Only when an institution enjoys legitimacy both on substantive and substantive grounds, it can effectively achieve its goals. While the concept of legitimacy itself bears an intersubjective quality that involves the collective and individual internalisation of certain external standards, the ability to make use of these intersubjective dynamics is usually only granted to states and more rarely to institutionalised but nongovernmental organisations. While current and prominent literature on institutional legitimacy thus adopt a fundamentally transnational perspective, where states and institutionalised organisations remain the ultimate actors to legitimise both international regimes and institutions, this study argues that so-called Global Contestation Networks (GCNs), too, have the ability to partake in the legitimisation-process of international regimes through the employment of a contestative discourse. These are citizen-based, are non-institutional and organise themselves purely through online platforms such as Twitter and Facebook while making use of other media to create and disseminate their discourse. As such, this study argues GCNs ought to be considered an important factor when conceptualising the contemporary global political landscape as they bear the ability to contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes. By the example of the student-led FridaysForFuture-Movement for climate action, the present study seeks to illustrate on which grounds and through which means such non-institutionalised citizen-based networks may employ a powerful public discourse with the ability to directly contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes. The findings suggest that by leveraging the intersubjective dynamics of institutional legitimisation and a self-understanding of GCNs as representatives of a global citizenry, these networks indeed bear the capacity to directly contest the legitimacy of international regimes both on substantive and procedural grounds.
Introduction
“You've run out of excuses and we're running out of time. We’ve come here to let you know that change is coming whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people.”
(Thunberg 2018) With these words, Greta Thunberg, initiator and central figure of the student-led climate strike movement FridaysForFuture, directly addressed and urged political leaders at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference to finally take the required action to sustainably and holistically tackle climate change and reduce its consequences. While institutionalised nongovernmental organisations and their influence on global and local politics have been studied in great detail, non-institutionalised citizen-based networks such as the FridaysForFuture-Movement act in a conceptual grey zone. However, their ability to organise through online platforms and to create a global public discourse without institutional recognition entails real consequences for the organisational structures and legitimate authority of transnational regimes. As such, the present study proposes a refined conceptualisation of the global political landscape as a socially constructed sphere in which states share their legitimated authority not only with other states, international organisations and various institutionalised non-state actors but also with non-institutionalised citizen-based networks as a global political actor of their own. In particular, it is argued that these Global Contestation Networks (GCNs) bear the capacity to directly contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes based on an assessment of their principled values and the outcomes produced and procedures followed by transnational regimes.
The study is structured into two main parts. The first part develops the theoretical line of argument beginning with the assumption that the global political system may conceptually be divided into the spheres of international, transnational and global society. While political decision-makers act within the confines of transnational society, GCNs may be situated in the conceptual sphere of global society in which the focus increasingly lies on the individual citizen within a globalised world and other non-institutionalised entities. On these grounds, GCNs may enter a direct contractual relationship of authority with the organisations acting within transnational regimes, conceptually enabling the former to participate in the legitimisation processes of the latter. As such, the present study hypothesizes that despite their lack of financial means or institutional structures, GCNs are capable of creating a discourse that develops its power through the direct contestation of the legitimacy of transnational regimes.
The second part of this study provides an empirical assessment of these theoretical assumptions by conducting a semi-qualitative document analysis of primary sources that reflect the global public discourse created and shaped by the FFFM. The findings suggest that while there are several value-based arguments within the FFFM discourse, the arguments brought forth to the public indeed directly
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contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes both on substance or outcome-related and procedure-related grounds.
1. Background and Problem Statement:
Normative Issues of Institutional Legitimacy in a Global Society
Over the last few decades, students of institutional change and continuity have time and again emphasised the importance of legitimacy to the global political order as it is seen as the social foundation for international norms and rules as well as coordinated international action (Barnett 1997, 529; Cottrell 2016, 179; Hurd 1999, 380; Imerman 2018, 76). In this regard, states have traditionally been rendered, either explicitly or implicitly, as gatekeepers to the legitimisation processes of international regimes (Barnett 1997, 539–40; cf. Cottrell 2016; Hurd 1999; Imerman 2018; Lenz and Viola 2017). On these grounds, international regimes become legitimated authorities only because they are set up and maintained through states, to either produce collaboration or consensus towards shared or contested goals (Bull 2012, 71; Keohane and Nye 2011, 911; cf. Wendt 1999, 300–301). Yet, while most these scholars agree that legitimacy bears an intersubjective quality in that it requires the individual internalisation of certain external standards (esp. Hurd 1999, 388), this perspective usually excludes the direct participation of citizens and most non-state actors in international legitimisation processes. As a consequence, most accounts on institutional legitimacy follow – even if implicitly – a two-level logic that separates the domestic from the international sphere of politics, where both can communicate with each other only through negotiators of national governments (Bellamy and Weale 2015; Imerman 2018; Keohane 1984; Nye and Keohane 2009). Conceptually, this two-way street thus allows merely for the indirect influence of domestic actors on the international level as domestic ideas and interests are disseminated to national leaders and institutional negotiators who in turn put these on the international negotiating table (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 4–5; Putnam 1988, 434; Sikkink 2005, 153–54). Political negotiations and legitimisation processes, then, occur either between domestic societal actors and national representatives or among national representatives of different states on the international level.
While such conceptualisations might have been applicable to the international politico-institutional system after World War II, processes such as increasing bureaucratisation (Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 156–57), globalisation (Held and McGraw 1998, 137–38) in combination with economic and political liberalisation (Ruggie 1994, 8–9) have resulted in what has been identified as a
reflexive denationalisation of international institutions (Zürn 2004, 275–78). The emergence of
transnational professional associations (TPAs) as global actors may be seen as a result of these processes (Held 2015, 417; Nye and Keohane 2009, 335–36). Although, traditionally, institutionalist scholars have ultimately related those newly-emerged global actors back to individual states and their interests, the observed structural denationalisation has led others to impute a democratic deficit to international regimes in a transnational political system (Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 167; Habegger 2010, 187– 90; Nye 2010, 2–6; Sikkink 2005, 155).
On the conceptual and practical side, this observed democratic deficit of international regimes bears consequences for both their effectiveness in achieving their stated goals and, resulting from this, their legitimation processes. Subsequently, not only states and intergovernmental organisations but also nongovernmental actors are enabled to lay claim on active participation in the transnational political system (Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 168; Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger 1997, 2). As shown below in Figure 1, the legitimacy of transnational regimes is thus not established and contested merely by and among national governments as representatives of their respective citizenry ( ), but also by different non-state actors who may equally participate in the legitimisation processes of transnational institutional structures ( ) as advocates of certain issues and demands. What follows is the insight that any operationalisation of institutional legitimacy aiming to establish a realistic assessment of these processes ought to also consider the direct influence that non-state actors can have on the legitimacy of transnational institutions and regimes.
Figure 1: Dynamics of legitimisation as a two-level ( ) and semi-direct ( ) process
These democratic issues of transnational regimes have led institutionalist scholars to allow for a more constructivist – and less state-centred – approach to be incorporated in their studies of transnational institutions as they engage with the influence of norms, ideas and identity on world politics (Keck and Sikkink 1999, 90; Sikkink 2005, 152). As a consequence, these approaches are more focussed on non-state actors and a globalised individual who can reach out to like-minded others. While
Citizens
National Governments
Transnational Regimes
Non-state Actors
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there are several scholars who have taken up this approach and assessed the means and mechanisms through which various domestic and international nongovernmental actors can affect the structures of the transnational system (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 8–9; Lipscy 2017; Sikkink 2005; Tarrow and McAdam 2005), others identified an increasing professionalisation of non-state actors such as the above-mentioned INGOs, MNCs and TPAs. Therefore, it is argued that such processes have in fact further contributed to the democratic deficit of international institutions. As such, non-state actors, too, have made a move from being advocates of citizen-based ideas towards becoming institutionalised political (and to some extent self-interested) actors of their own (Arato 2015; Saurugger 2013; Seabrooke and Henriksen 2017; Sending and Neumann 2006, 668).
Despite these insights, there has been little attention to non-institutionalised, transboundary networks of citizens and their potential to directly contest the legitimacy of (inter)national institutions, as illustrated in Figure 2 ( ). As will be explored in the present study, the student-led FridaysForFuture Movement (FFFM) for climate action can be seen as an example of what may be labelled Global Contestation Networks (GCNs) as these do not rely on either national governments, or professionalised non-state actors to contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes.
Figure 2: Dynamics of legitimisation as a two-level ( ), semi-direct ( ) and direct ( ) process through Global Contestation Networks
A few scholars have pointed out that there has been an increase of non-institutionalised transnational activism aimed at delegitimising international institutions, however, the dynamics of which remain largely unaccounted for in the political sciences due to a lack of data and conceptual space (Smith and Wiest 2012; Tarrow 2005, 43–44; Wolfson 2013). Usually, accounts on transnational activism assess actors that bear at least some extent of (observable) institutionalised structures (cf. Arensman, van Wessel, and Hilhorst 2017; Carpenter 2010; Hadden and Jasny 2019), and accounts
Citizens
National Governments
Transnational Regimes Non-state Actors
that focus on informal citizen-based activism and social movements remain largely unaffiliated with their respective conceptual position in global politics and even less so with notions of legitimacy and the contestation thereof (cf. Abdelrahman 2011; Conio 2017). Indeed, any adequate conceptualisation of a global citizenry (in particular non-institutionalised networks of global citizen-based activists such as the above-mentioned GCNs) as a global political entity of its own requires a look beyond the bureaucratic, rational-legal or institutional structure through which state and non-state actors are usually assessed. This is especially so considered that economic globalisation and the evolution of communication technologies have provided such networks with the means to form without material means (cf. Törnberg and Wahlström 2018). As a consequence, they are provided with the ability to reach out to and mobilise a large transboundary body of like-minded citizens without establishing immediately identifiable organisational structures (Richter, Antonakis, and Harders 2018, 142–43; Tarrow and McAdam 2005, 44). Yet, the public discourses created and shaped by these GCNs directly respond to the issues of institutional legitimisation in a global society, where the focus increasingly lies on the individual rather than states and their collaboration (Williams 2005, 20), and as such require further research. The following chapter establishes a framework that aims at conceptualising such GCNs within the contemporary understanding of the global political system. The purpose of this study is therefore to address the dipartite question (1) on what grounds and (2) through which means GCNs can contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes so as to instigate institutional change towards their principled beliefs.
2. Theoretical Framework
If we accept the premise that legitimacy matters for the study of international relations as it constitutes the legal, normative and intersubjective foundation of global politics and the organisations acting therein, then not only the entities defining and enforcing transnational norms and rules but also the nature of these norms and rules themselves must be considered when approaching institutional change through citizen-based legitimacy contestation. In order to illustrate the conceptual space from within which GCNs can directly contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes and their constitutive organisations, the following section establishes some terminological clarity in regard to the different political entities within the global political order while placing these in the context of the conceptual spheres of international, transnational and global society. Following this, GCNs may be situated within the self-understanding of global society from where they may be entitled to directly participate in the legitimisation processes of those regimes acting within inter- and transnational society. Following these insights, this chapter will conclude with a conceptualisation of the type power that GCNs might employ in order to create a discourse that directly contests the legitimacy of transnational regimes and their constituents.
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2.1 Organisations, Institutions, Regimes and Networks within the Global
Political System
Since the end of World War II, students of international relations from various theoretical perspectives have produced a plenitude of definitions and conceptualisations of different actors within the global political system. While realists struggle to acknowledge the influence of nongovernmental political actors in international relations in the first place (Carr 1946, e.g. 102; Mearsheimer 1994a), rational functionalists focus on the cooperation of states in a global political system of anarchy when addressing and approaching international institutions and organisations (Keohane 1984, 1988). Finally, social constructivists “situate international institutions in their intersubjective social context” which allows for the following delineation of different political entities within global politics (Simmons and Martin 2013, 333).
2.1.1 Organisations, Institutions & Regimes
Generally, the academic literature refers to international organisations, institutions and regimes in similar terms, sometimes distinguished simply by their level of formality (Danish 2008, 220). For the sake of simplicity, the term organisation may thus refer to institutionalised entities exhibiting some level of formal bureaucratic structures including states, intergovernmental organisations and nongovernmental actors such as INGOs, MNCs and TPAs (Risse 2013, 427–28; Simmons and Martin 2013, 326). Yet, within this view organisations differ from institutions and regimes in that the former are regarded as clearly definable entities, while the latter two concepts refer more generally to sets of rules and norms (Simmons and Martin 2013, 326). As such, in accordance with a large body of institutional research and for the purposes of theoretical simplification, institutions and regimes are treated as synonymous concepts in the present study (see e.g. Keohane 1988, 384; Mearsheimer 1994b, 8; Scott 2014, 140). Both concepts may thus refer to rules, norms and decision-making processes which “prohibit, permit or prescribe certain actions and thereby setting standards for behaviour” (Schiele 2019, 49). To avoid conceptual confusion, such arrangements will be collectively referred to as regimes hereafter.
While regimes are usually conceived of as international normative arrangements among states (see esp. Ruggie 1975, 570), the first chapter has pointed out that due to the increasing professionalisation and institutionalisation of nongovernmental actors, regimes may also be comprised of transnational arrangements between different governmental and institutionalised nongovernmental actors (Gehring and Oberthür 1997, 204). This is certainly true for the Transnational1 Climate Change
1 Although referred to as the International Climate Change Regime by Yamin and Depledge (2004), following
Regime (TCCR) which consists of close collaboration and agreements between state and stakeholder organisations, including intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), United Nations (UN) bodies, INGOs and specialised agencies (cf. Widerberg and Pattberg 2017, 72–73; Yamin and Depledge 2004, 30).
2.1.2 Networks
Contrary to organisations, networks in turn may refer strictly to non-institutional connections between two or more actors (Risse 2013, 428). While these networks themselves may not exhibit institutional structures, their components may. Most prominently, this is the case with transnational advocacy networks (TANs): the politico-strategic base of which is usually – but not always – formed around nongovernmental organisations (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 2–4). For conceptual clarity, TANs differ from the here introduced GCNs based on two grounds. Firstly, GCNs do not exhibit bureaucratic structures and neither are they comprised of different organisational constituents stemming from civil society, but are considered an entity of their own kind that originates directly from a global citizenry. However, this aspect does not a priori restrict GCNs from forming a constitutive part of TANs. For example, the FFFM has various links (but no official affiliation) to institutionalised actors, such as the
Scientists4Future, listing more than 100 scientists (Hagedorn 2019), the Climate Action Network,
comprised of more than 1400 NGOs (Climate Action Network 2019) or the Companies4Future which currently lists more than 100 companies in support of the FFFM (Companies4Future 2019). This aspect does, however, suggest a clear conceptual distinction of GCNs from the much broader concept of TANs in that the latter may exhibit at least some level of institutional structure while the former is strictly located in the non-institutionalised sphere of global politics. In this context, such institutional structures include established organs and hierarchies (Klabbers 2012, 171), the access to financial means (Graham 2017), or the above-mentioned bureaucratic structures (Barnett and Finnemore 2004, e.g. 159-60). Secondly, while TANs primarily aim to pursue their value-based goals, GCNs principally contest the legitimacy claims of the transnational organisations that enact the sets of rules, norms and decision-making processes within a given issue-area in the global political system. To further elucidate how GCNs may be conceptually situated within a global political order, the following section elaborates on the different spheres of international, transnational and global society.
institutionalised non-states actors, the present study will adapt the term transnational to refer to the climate change regime. Section 2.2 elaborates on these different conceptual spheres in global politics. Given the focus of this study on Global Contestation Networks, this simple definition of the TCCR will suffice for the hypothesised dynamics of legitimacy contestation.
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2.2 Conceptual Levels in Global Politics
First coined during the late 1990s, the concept of ‘world society’ stems from English Theory and outlines a global political order that is defined by more than just the interaction of states and international organisations (Meyer et al. 1997). For further internal terminological coherency, the present study prefers the term global society over world society when referring to this concept. Recent contributions to the academic literature on global society emphasise its conceptual distinction from the international society, which consists of institutionalised collectives including governmental and nongovernmental actors that form and enforce the norms and rules of the international political order (Clark 2003, 76; Weiss and Burke 2011). Although these accounts usually use the term inter-national society, what is essentially described in these studies above is in fact congruent with the idea of trans-national processes which – contrary to intertrans-national institutions that incorporate inter-state relationships – may be defined as “distinctive emergent properties from the actions of public and private actors across diverse national contexts and across diverse spatial levels” (Morgan 2006, 142–43). This view explicitly includes institutionalised nongovernmental actors such as the INGOs, MNCs and TPAs mentioned in the previous section (Botzem and Hofmann 2008, 3; Ford 2003, 122; Morgan 2006, 143). In accordance with the dynamics illustrated in Figure 2, the present study thus favours the categorisation of international society as comprised merely of intergovernmental interaction and from which international regimes are formed and legitimised, while referring to transnational society when institutionalised nongovernmental actors are included in the political processes that form and disseminate norms and rules and thus contribute to the formation of transnational regimes.
In contrast to the inter- and transnational, global society describes “a political system in which states are not the predominant actors […], where political activity is principally focused upon individuals, rather than institutionalised collectives” (Williams 2005, 20). Such distinction becomes relevant for the presented argumentation as it suggests that in normative terms, institutional legitimacy is not exclusively deliberated by constituents of either inter- or transnational society, but becomes subject of deliberation also from within the confines of global society (Clark 2007, 13). As illustrated in Figure 3 below, it can be argued that GCNs originate from the conceptual sphere of such global society, from where they can directly address individual actors, organisations and regimes acting within the conceptual boundaries of transnational society. This in turn, has implications for the legitimacy of regimes emanating from transnational society as their “principles come to be reformulated to take account of those norms emanating from [global] society” (Clark 2007, 11). This insight further allows for the attribution of agency to GCNs, as through such self-understanding within global society they may act autonomously and directly oppose the structural constraints that transnational regimes exhibit towards such non-institutionalised actors (cf. Ford 2003, 124).
Figure 3: The three conceptual levels of political collaboration in global politics
The conceptualisation of a global society that incorporates the active participation of state, institutionalised non-state actors and non-institutionalised actors may thus further help to define the goals of GCNs as presented in this study. As such, acting from within the conceptual sphere of a global society, GCNs may contest the legitimacy of both international and transnational regimes on the grounds that they demand an acknowledgement as a global political entity that directly represents the ideas and values emanating from a global citizenry.
2.3 Global Contestation Networks
Following the insights from the previous sections, it is now possible to develop a clearer understanding of how GCNs can be defined and embedded in the general argumentation of this study.
Globalisation, liberalisation and bureaucratisation have given rise to a global citizenry with the ability to connect through the internet and organise alongside the institutional settings within transnational society (Targowski 2014, 108–9). When these globalised citizens organise themselves around certain value-based issues, they have the potential to form powerful networks that transcend national borders and institutional structures.
As such, citizen-based Global Contestation Networks (GCNs) can be defined as informal, non-institutionalised networks that evolve around certain, sometimes more or less concretely
Global Society
States <—> Inst. Nongov. Actors <—> GCNs
Transnational Society
States <—> Inst. Nongov. Actors
International Society
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formulated problems and issues2, with the aim of contesting the legitimacy of international institutions
so as to instigate institutional change towards their respective values and ideas.
These networks do not necessarily rely on the support of either nongovernmental or governmental organisations, but advocate themselves and organise autonomously through online platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter (cf. Tarrow 2005, 43–44). Contrary to other nongovernmental actors, they enjoy no institutional support or recognition, and hence rely strictly on non-material power which manifests itself in the creation of a powerful, anti-transnational discourse, i.e. against the legitimacy of regimes within transnational society (cf. Sending and Neumann 2006, 652) .
Although GCNs certainly promote principled ideas, causes and norms, the emphasis on contestation describes well what makes these networks unique: GCNs do not immediately claim to be part of transnational regimes but their initial purpose is to question and contest the legitimacy of these to provoke institutional change towards their stated goals. As illustrated in Figure 4, GCNs are located strictly at the level of resistance, which stems from the level of global society, but do not lay claim on active participation at the executive level of governance within transnational society3. Although an
elaboration thereof exceeds the scope of the present study by far, GCNs may subsequently advocate the (conceptual) formation of a global regime4 in which they obtain the institutional approval to participate
in the establishment of rules, norms and decision-making processes in a given topical area.
Figure 4: Dynamics of legitimisation ( ) and contestation ( ) on the conceptual levels of International, Transnational and Global Society
2 These problems and issues might also be more structural and multi-layered than specific, as with neonationalism
or neoliberalism in contrast to specific environmental problems and issues. Although the scope of this study does not permit an elaboration of such issues, further research in this regard is suggested in the concluding paragraph.
3 As such, it could be argued that GCNs lose their status as contestation networks as soon as they are granted access
to the decision-making processes of transnational regimes.
4 Which – for some – corresponds to the concept of global governance (see e.g. Ford 2003, 122; Held and McGraw
1998, 240). Citizens National Governments & Intergov. Organisations Institutionalised Non-state Actors (INGOs, MNCs, TPAs) Transnational Society Global Society Global Contestation Networks International Society Transnational Regimes
Yet, for the time being, GCNs are reactionary entities as they evolve around certain values that they feel are underrepresented or neglected in the current political system. As Clark asserts, ”we are most likely to ask questions about the legitimacy of a system only when things appear to be going wrong” (2003, 75). Therefore, at the moment of formation, there is an inherent opposition within GCNs towards the legitimacy of the institutional settings within transnational society.
This section has suggested the conceptualisation of three distinct spheres within global politics, the disambiguation of which may help to better understand the processes described in the present study. In particular, it has been argued that international society may be defined in terms of state-state interaction, the realist-tinted conceptual sphere within which international regimes are formed. Transnational society in turn refers to the sphere in which states, international organisations and institutionalised nongovernmental actors form transnational regimes. Lastly, the delineation of a global society points towards the conceptual space within which GCNs may be placed. This insight proves to be essential for the following section on the intersubjective dynamics of institutional legitimacy, as only if GCNs are adequately conceptualised with the global political landscape, their influence on institutional legitimisation processes and change can be assessed empirically.
2.4 Contractual Authority as the Social Foundation of Institutional
Legitimacy
Institutional legitimacy is seen by some scholars as an important element to explain change and continuity within the contemporary global political system (Cottrell 2016; Imerman 2018; Zürn 2004). The underlying assumption of these studies is that the social dynamics of legitimacy affect the institutional setting and thus become defining factors for either continuity or change within regimes. While the first chapter emphasised the conceptual shortcomings of contemporary understandings of legitimisation processes in a global political setting, the previous section established how GCNs may be regarded as political actors with some degree of agency in a global society vis-à-vis the organisations acting within the confines of transnational society. Following these insights, this section elaborates on the concept of legitimacy itself, its social dynamics and its relation to authority. In regard to GCNs, the purpose here is to explain on what grounds the claims to legitimacy by inter- and transnational regimes may be contested by entities originating from the conceptual sphere of global society. Ultimately, the intersubjective dynamics between different authorities in global politics allow for an assessment of institutional change and continuity based on the contestation of institutional legitimacy by any global political actor that is conceptualised within global society.
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2.4.1 The Intersubjective and Normative Nature of Institutional Legitimacy
While there exist various similar approaches (see i.a. Clark 2005, 30; Lenz and Viola 2017, 947–48), institutional legitimacy may generally be defined in terms of a relational concept between legitimising actor and given regime, or simply as „the belief by an actor that a rule or [regime] ought to be obeyed“ (Hurd 2008, 30). In this view, legitimacy bears a fundamentally intersubjective and normative nature as it ultimately relies on the individual internalisation by an actor of a given norm or rule enacted by a given regime and, prior to this, the acceptance of the regime’s raison d'être (Hurd 2008, 30–31; Imerman 2018, 77–78). It follows, that as soon as this internalisation is incomplete or abandoned, the legitimacy of a given rule or regime is affected, which in turn bears consequences to the institutional continuity. This insight further suggests that institutional legitimacy is closely connected to relationships of authority as only if the authority of a given regime is generally and individually accepted – thus both in normative and subjective terms – it can be regarded as legitimate.
2.4.2 Contractual Authority and Legitimacy
In this regard, Zürn (2018) put forth the concept of contractual authority which originates from the Hobbesian conception of a social contract between two or more actors. Within such contractual relationship, the actions of a dominant actor become legitimated by an obedient actor based on an assessment of the mutual benefit that was agreed upon by both parties beforehand (2018, 41–42). Although often analysed within the context of a bilateral relationship between states and international regimes (Hooghe, Lenz, and Marks 2018; Lake 2009), the concept of contractual authority can also be placed within the context of global society, where individuals and networks of individuals stemming from a global citizenry may be regarded as political actors of their own vis-à-vis the organisations of transnational regimes. As such, one may extend this notion of contractual (Zürn 2018) or relational (Lake 2009) authority in so far as to argue that there exists a contractual relationship of authority between transnational regimes and GCNs as direct representatives of a global citizenry in that the latter may approve of or contest both the respective raisons d'être and the actions performed by the organisations acting within a given transnational regime. This contractual relationship bears great importance to the argumentation presented here as it constitutes the social condition for transnational regimes to be regarded as either legitimate or illegitimate authorities within the conceptual sphere of global society5.
5It should be noted that this is not exclusively true for GCNs but may relate to all three dynamics of institutional
legitimisation as shown in Figure 2. My argument here is that the same dynamics through which state—regime and non-state—regime relationships are usually assessed can be applied equally well to the relationship between non-institutional global political actors and transnational regimes.
2.4.3 Substantive and Procedural Legitimacy
Based on this conception of a contractual authority relationship between legitimiser and to-be-legitimated, Barnard (2001) and Barnett and Finnemore (2004) have pointed out the aspects of institutional legitimacy in international politics. First, an institution enjoys substantive legitimacy if goals that respond to the values and ideas of the broader community are successfully pursued (Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 165). These values and ideas are unconditional, i.e. independent of the means through which they are achieved, and emanate from the broader community (Barnard 2001, 27–28). As established in the previous section, non-institutionalised actors including GCNs may therefore be a considerable part of this broader, i.e. global, community as these directly represent and advocate the respective values and ideas emanating from within a global citizenry. If – for parts of the global citizenry – there is a perceived incongruity between the activity of transnational regimes and the general values shared by the broader community, then there is reason to contest the legitimacy of those regimes in performing actions that do not contribute to the mutually agreed contractual terms. Second, procedural legitimacy is given when the procedures and actions of an institution are in themselves viewed as proper and correct, initially independent of the outcome or underlying rationale but ultimately reliant on the general values and ideas shared by the broader community (Barnard 2001, 27–28; Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 165). This aspect thus relates directly to the manner in which these shared goals are pursued, that is e.g. whether they are transparent to the broader community, democratic (inclusive), non-discriminatory, or whether they can be “justified by reference to relevant legal principles” (Wheathly 2014, 111).
In terms of contestation and approval, these insights thus allow for the legitimacy of transnational regimes to be contested or approved both on grounds that are substance-oriented (do the
outcomes respond to and represent the values of the broader community?) and procedure-oriented (are the procedures used to make decisions proper and do they reflect the will of the broader community?). These guiding
questions constitute the analytical base for the empirical assessment of the FFFM in chapter 4.
Due to the intersubjectivity and the need for broad internalisation to institutional legitimisation processes, these insights also allow for a conceptual and practical integration of GCNs in the general dynamics of legitimacy in the global political system. In the context of global society, GCNs may thus be enabled to directly contest or approve the legitimacy of transnational regimes based on these substance and procedure-oriented grounds. As such, the following section argues that GCNs may participate in global legitimisation processes through the creation of a public discourse which is directly aimed at contesting the legitimacy of transnational regimes. As will be argued, this form of discursive power is independent of material means and institutional recognition and is thus enabled simply
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through online organisation and mobilisation. While the previous theoretical sections have thus elaborated on what grounds GCNs may contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes, the following and last theoretical section of this study illustrates through which means GCNs may do so.
2.5 The Power of Contestation
The previous theoretical sections have pointed out that the legitimacy of transnational regimes may be assessed both on substantive and procedural grounds following the intersubjective and normative dynamics of legitimisation. Further, it has been argued that since GCNs may conceptually be situated within the sphere of global society, from where they may be perceived (or see themselves) as contractual partners of those organisations representing and enacting the rules, norms and decision-making processes of transnational regimes. Within this global view, GCNs may be entitled to actively participate in the legitimisation processes of these regimes which are based on the consent and internalisation of all constitutive actors. Building on these insights, the following section identifies the means through which GCNs may directly contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes based on the aforementioned substantive and procedural grounds. Given their non-institutionalised nature and their capacity to organise through social media, GCNs gain access to a distinct form of social power which manifests itself in a contestative6 discourse that may instigate institutional change. This social leverage
might thus be conceived of as a form of discursive power in that it allows for the shaping of norms and ideas through which policies and political processes are influenced (cf. Fuchs and Kalfagianni 2009, 554).
2.5.1 Power within and beyond Structures
In order to approach capacity of GCNs to contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes, the definition of power by Barnett and Duvall (2005) may serve as a point of departure as it emphasises the notion that power is fundamentally operated through social relations, concerns the agency of social subjects within a given system of power and may be purely immaterial. They refer to power as the “production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their circumstances and fate” (2005, 42). A central aspect of this definition concerns the specificity and
6 Although this might sound like a ghastly neologism to the native speaker, it certainly describes well the quality
of the discourse described in the present study in that pivotal to any discourse that GCNs might produce lies always the contestation of the transnational regime’s legitimacy in a given issue area. This aspect of contestation should thus not just be considered epiphenomenal but indeed a central aspect of the power employed by GCNs. In absence of a fitting adjective of contestation, the term contestative will be used.
proximity of the social relations through which power works. These social relations, i.e. the connection between two actors in a given power relationship, may be diffuse or direct (Barnett and Duvall 2005, 47). Along these lines, the authors distinguish between structural and productive power, whereas the former works through direct social relations of constitution and the latter through more diffuse constitutive relations that produce the social capacity of actors (2005, 48).
Applied to the case of GCNs, their capacity to contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes may obtain a structural quality in the sense that their “social relational capacities, subjectivities, and interests are directly shaped by the social positions that they occupy” (Barnett and Duvall 2005, 53). But it may also operate in a socially diffuse (beyond-structural) manner in that it makes reference to “the constitution of all social subjects with various social powers through systems of knowledge and discursive practices of broad and general social scope” (Barnett and Duvall 2005, 55). As such, the power conceptualised here transcends purely structural relations by taking reference to the normative issues on which the conceptual and practiced duality of the transnational political system versus a global citizenry is based. In that sense, the power of GCNs is geared towards more generalised and diffused social processes, i.e. by creating and fixing the meaning and terms of a global society in which all social beings may potentially participate in political decision-making (and legitimisation) processes (Barnett and Duvall 2005, 55). Organisations acting within transnational regimes, then, can be understood as carriers of sets of particular ideas, and, as such, become entities of public scrutiny within global society (Boudon 2003, 15–16; Rothstein 2005, 143). As a consequence, institutions may change over time as “actors’ ideas and discourse about them can change in response to changes in their performance” (Schmidt 2008, 317–18). Yet, though the power employed by GCNs thus reaches beyond structures, it is not entirely detached from it and indeed gains some of its leverage through the explicit reference to those predefined structures and the social positions within these that shape the social relational capabilities of different actors (cf. Barnett and Duvall 2005, 53). In this view, contestative power bridges the gap between structural and productive power by scrutinising the structural conception of contemporary transnational politics and by then establishing the normative idea of global society. In regard to the legitimacy of regimes within the conceptual sphere of transnational society, the “social domain within which the terms of legitimacy are debated, contested, and refined” is subsequently broadened to the extent that actors emanating from an understanding of global society can actively participate in these processes from outside of the transnational society (Clark 2007, 13–14).
2.5.2 Power and Discourse
Following these insights, the previously discussed intersubjective and normative aspects underlying institutional legitimacy further suggest that the legitimacy of transnational regimes can be deliberated through discourse which may be defined not only by “the substantive content of ideas but also the
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interactive processes by which ideas are conveyed” (Schmidt 2008, 305). Even if formal decision-making power remains with transnational regimes, the discourse created and disseminated by GCNs may nevertheless directly influence the legitimacy of regimes both on substantive and procedural grounds.
Along these lines, Fuchs and Kalfagianni offer a more nuanced approach to power, which they refer to as discursive power and define as “the capacity to influence policies and political processes through the shaping of norms and ideas” (2009, 554). This conception of power is similar to what Leander has referred to as epistemic power, which specifically “works through and by affecting the knowledge of actors” (2005, 811). Certainly, this aspect of power is applicable also to GCNs, as through the creation of a public discourse they may actively affect the knowledge of those actors within transnational regimes. As such, this perspective emphasises the “transformative [capacity] of ideas and discourse, that is, to show how they exert a causal influence in political reality and, thereby, engender institutional change” (Schmidt 2008, 306).
Lastly, the reason for applying the term contestative power is that of conceptual precision as this type of power specifically refers to the contestation of legitimacy as a means to an end. Therefore, it might be placed within the more general definition of discursive power, which in turn might be situated between structural and productive power. Yet, as this study particularly aims at addressing the means through which GCNs can directly contest the legitimacy of transnational regimes, the emphasis on contestation should be made explicit in this regard. As due to their non-institutionalised nature, GCNs primarily rely on non-material means of power exertion. As a consequence, they develop a body of broad public support through the organisation and mobilisation in online platforms and by publicly pointing out the procedural and substantive lack of legitimacy that transnational regimes may exhibit. The power that GCNs exert thus lies namely within the discourse they create and can be empirically assessed as such.
Therefore, the following chapter establishes a methodology with the objective to illustrate how the contestative power of the FFFM shapes the discourse on climate change in that it directly contests the legitimacy of the Transnational Climate Change Regime (TCCR) based on substantive and procedural grounds.
3. Research Design
While the objective of the second chapter was to shed some theoretical light on the dipartite guiding question for this study, this chapter aims at developing an apt research design for the empirical assessment of the general claims presented earlier.
To convey the general argument of this study, the example of the Fridays For Future Movement (FFFM) is analysed to demonstrate whether the above-mentioned theoretical assumptions bear practical validity. Although single case studies have been subject to methodological criticism due to their single unit-analysis, their external validity (i.e. their generalisability) is impaired (Halperin and Heath 2017, 154), as they offer an in-depth knowledge about the causal mechanisms that are applicable at least for the particular subject of study (Gerring 2004, 349). In addition, the proposed theoretical assumptions offer the possibility of broad generalisability of the argumentation, while the illustration of it through a single case study does suggest for further investigation to verify the theoretical assumptions by conducting research on different cases of the type of GCNs that is conceptualised here.
As such, the proposed methodology attempts to illustrate that through the creation of a public discourse reflecting their principled values, the FFFM indeed bears the capacity to contest the legitimacy of the TCCR, both on procedural and substantial grounds. This effort requires the identification of a contestative discourse brought to public by the FFFM.
It follows that the general subject of investigation is the discourse created by the FFFM and its repercussions within the TCCR. Therefore, a semi-qualitative document analysis which aims at “finding, selecting, appraising (making sense of) and synthesising data contained in documents” is suggested as the method of choice as it provides an effective means of illustrating the discourse under enquiry7 (Bowen 2009, 27–28). Especially newspaper articles and written8 statements of both
non-institutionalised and institutional actors allow for the analysis of a public discourse, in particular how it is shaped and disseminated (cf. Richardson 2007, 7). The documents taken into consideration for the empirical analysis of the present study differ in their sources but are all of primary nature, including FFFM initiator Greta Thunberg’s speech at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24), the demands of the FFFM as stated on their website, as well as the public response to these
7 Given the focus on the institutionalised GCNs and the power that their contestative discourse entails, a
non-institutionalist approach was purposefully chosen. The main objective of this analysis remains to show that this discourse is in fact directly contesting the legitimacy of transnational regimes. As elaborated in section 2.4.1, actors within transnational regimes are seen as carriers of ideas which can change over time depending on the general discourse. The analysis is thus based on this simplified causal mechanism and does not delve into historical process tracing and other methodological paths that new institutionalists literature suggests (see e.g. Schmidt 2008, 304–5)
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by United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres, and 47 supporting newspaper articles from 20 different countries9. The information within the reviewed documents was thematically coded
in order to appraise the hypothesised discourse and its contestative nature (cf. Bowen 2009, 32).
4. Findings
4.1 The FridaysForFuture Movement
FridaysForFuture10(FFFM), is a global movement constituted of students and pupils from currently over
40 countries who demand global political action towards achieving the goals agreed upon by the United Nations (UN) at the 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris (Chang and Smith 2018; Crouch 2018; Kaplan 2019). The movement was initiated through social media in 2018 by Swedish student Greta Thunberg, who had initially protested for three weeks during school hours in front of the Swedish Parliament in an effort to draw attention to global warming and climate change (Gessen 2018). Within six months, the idea to skip school and to demand that “politicians treat the global climate crisis as the emergency it is” had spread across the world, with tens of thousands of students protesting in front of local, and national parliaments every Friday (Hertsgaard 2019).
The movement has no institutional structures and is organised in a decentralised manner through social media, i.e. Facebook and Twitter, and a webpage where individual, country-specific events can be registered and official updates retrieved11. Despite the lack of institutional structures,
through their demonstrations and online presence, the FFFM has reached a wide, global audience and has arguably been able to shape the global discourse on climate change through different channels: next to international media attention and considerable responses on social media, many national and international politicians have responded to these protests (Behrmann 2019; European Parliament Liaison Office Belgium 2019; de Ruiter 2019). Additionally, Greta Thunberg has emerged as the leading figure of the movement and has attended the COP24 in Poland and the 2018 World Economic Forum, where she directly addressed political leaders accusing them of showing too little actual effort in overcoming the immediate effects of climate change (Sutter and Davidson 2018; Wearden and Carrington 2019).
9 A full list of which can be found in the Annex. The selection for the articles is mainly based on language-related
grounds.
10 Alternatively called School Strike 4 Climate in Australia, New Zealand and the United States (Collins 2019;
Hertsgaard 2019; Hinchliffe 2018), Youth Strike 4 Climate in the United Kingdom (J. Taylor 2019), and Youth 4 Climate in Belgium and the Netherlands (Nijs 2019; de Ruiter 2019)
4.2 Identifying the Contestative Discourse of the FFFM
The findings suggest that while there exist more features to the general discourse created by the FFFM12, there are two central aspects to their general argumentation that illustrate the contestative
nature of their discourse. The first aspect emphasises the perceived exclusion of the youth and their respective values and ideas from the decision-making procedures of the TCCR. The second aspect concerns more generally the systemic inability of the TCCR to produce the demanded and intended outcomes. While both two aspects bear value-based arguments and express the principled goals of the network to a large extent, they also point at the normative issues of a transnational regime within the proposed conceptualisation of a global society where citizens are theoretically and practically included in the regime’s legitimisation processes13. It is suggested that the contestative power of GCNs lies
exactly in this discourse in that it publicly (and globally) contests the transnational regime’s legitimacy both on procedural (exclusion of the youth) and substantive (systemic inability) grounds and therefore creates the necessary leverage for non-institutionalised global actors to potentially instigate institutional change within the TCCR. The following sub-sections elaborate on these two aspects and illustrate how these directly respond to normative issues of regime legitimacy.
4.2.1 Exclusion of the Youth
The first aspect of the discourse created by the FFFM that was identified in the reviewed documents concerns the perceived exclusion of the youth and their principled values from the procedures and decision-making processes of the TCCR.
In an open letter published in the Guardian (2019), members of the FFFM argued that “[y]oung people make up more than half of the global population. […] Despite that fact, most of us are not included in the local and global decision-making process. We are the voiceless future of humanity.” This formulation is exemplary for the generally identified discourse within the reviewed documents on the exclusion of the youth from transnational decision-making processes.
By arguing that the procedures of the TCCR do not include the democratic participation of the youth as representatives of a global citizenry, the FFFM thus created a discourse that directly responds to the TCCR’s procedural legitimacy. As argued in section 2.3.3, the procedural legitimacy of
12 Such as arguments concerning the political lip service that decision-makers pay instead of actively pursuing the
values shared by the broader community, or measures of collective action advocated by the regime which effectively exclude large parts of the global community.
13 As well as the decision-making processes, rules and norms within a given issue area, which hints at the
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transnational regimes is dependent on whether the procedures used to make decisions are perceived as proper and reflect the will of the broader community through these procedures (cf. Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 167). As a consequence of this insight, the British chapter of the FFFM directly refers to the regimes’ lack of procedural legitimacy and demands from policy-makers to “recognise that young people have the biggest stake in our future, by incorporating youth views into policy making and bringing the voting age down to 16” (Kaur 2019; UK Student Climate Network 2019).
As such, this aspect of the discourse can be seen as a direct contestation of the procedural legitimacy of the TCCR as its decision-making processes do not include the legal participation of the young members of the FFFM although they claim to be the ones that have to live with the consequences of the contemporary decision-making procedures within the TCCR.
4.2.1 Systemic Inability
The findings further suggest a second central aspect of the contestative discourse created and advocated by the FFFM which relates to the systemic inability to represent and integrate the values of the broader community, of which the FFFM might be seen as a constituent within the conceptual sphere of global society. Thunberg addresses these issues directly when she approached the transnational leaders during COP24:
“Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible there’s
no hope. We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. We need to keep the fossil
fuels in the ground and we need to focus on equity. And if solutions within this system are
so impossible to find then maybe we should change the system itself?”
(Thunberg 2018, ¶8, emphases added)
This argument directly contests the substantive legitimacy of the TCCR, which is determined by the level to which the rules and norms of the regime themselves as well as the outcome it produces are successful in representing the values and goals of the broader community (cf. Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 178). While the FFFM generally welcomed the 2016 Paris Agreement, Thunberg’s speech illustrates the anti-systemic quality of the network’s criticism which points at the inability of the TCCR’s constituents in pursuing the Agreement’s goals14 successfully. In this sense, the agreement
14 In which international leaders pledged to keep the global average temperature well below 2.0 degrees Celsius as
compared to pre-industrial levels and to take active measures to effectively reduce this level to 1.5 degree Celsius (see Blau 2017, ix).
itself along with its prepositions can be seen as a procedure within the TCCR that instead of being contested was in fact approved by the FFFM. Yet, as one of the German FFFM members eloquently argued in regard to the agreement: “this is our only guarantee that we can live to a ripe old age on an intact planet. Now this agreement is doing little more than gathering dust in a drawer because you [the decision-makers within the TCCR] are failing to adhere to it” (Traufetter et al. 2019). As such, the agreement itself is not under contestation of the FFFM but rather the systemic inability to achieve those goals set within the Paris framework.
Such argumentation thus specifically contests the legitimacy of the TCCR on substantial grounds as the regime fails to produce the outcomes which ought to be based on the values and ideas of the broader community. From the argumentation of underrepresentation of values and ideas of the youth in the procedures, this particular discourse argues more broadly that the needs of humanity (as part of a global ecosystem within a conceptual understanding of a global society) are thus not adequately represented in the TGGR itself as it currently constituted.
To sum up, the argument that the decision-making procedures of the TCCR thus legally and practically exclude the youth can be identified as a contestative discourse that points at the procedural legitimacy of transnational regimes. This insight might be generalisable in so far as any group emanating from within a reflective understanding of global society might create a public discourse that emphasises their exclusion from formal decision-making processes within transnational regimes. On the other hand, the second contestative discourse, which directly addresses the issues of an inherent systemic inability to produce the outcomes that reflect the values of the broader, i.e. global community might be generalisable to other GCNs as these might feel that their values and ideas are not represented by any given transnational regime. Together, these two aspects thus bear the ability to contest the legitimacy of international regimes both on procedural and substantive grounds, the implications of which may bear consequences for change and continuity within these regimes. If the constituents of transnational regimes are seen as carriers of ideas that may change depending on the general public discourse, then attempts to contest the institutional legitimacy most certainly bear the potential to instigate institutional change.
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4. Concluding Remarks
The theoretical argumentation of this study and the empirical assessment thereof have produced a first possible step towards establishing a new conceptualisation of a global political landscape in which individual citizens and citizen-based networks bear the capacity to create a consequential discourse which receives its power through the direct contestation of the legitimacy of transnational regimes.
While the political and economic globalisation and liberalisation have produced the means for non-institutionalised networks to emerge, organise themselves and address the general public, transnational regimes are increasingly urged to include a politically active and global citizenry into their decision-making processes in order to maintain and stabilise their legitimacy. This insight is grounded in the proposed dynamics of legitimacy which are inherently intersubjective and require both the legitimiser and the to-be-legitimised to enter a contractual authority relationship based on an agreement of mutual benefit. The conceptualisation of the three spheres of international, transnational and global society allows for the identification of Global Contestation Networks as global value-based actors of their own with the theoretical capacity to enter such contractual relationship with constituents of transnational regimes.
The assessment of the FridaysForFuture-Movement has confirmed these assumptions as it produced a clearer understanding of how the discourse created by the FFFM directly responds to the normative issues of a transnational society and the procedural and substantive legitimacy of and within the Transnational Climate Change Regime. While the scope and perspective of the present study did not allow for an assessment of the institutional responses and possible signs of institutional change (i.e. from within the TCCR), the development of the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit can certainly be seen as a direct reaction to the contestative discourse created and spread by the FFFM. In this regard, António Guterres, Sectretary-General of the UN personally addressed the demands of the FFFM in an op-ed in the Guardian (Guterres 2019b), and pledged “[t]o mobilize people worldwide to take action on climate change and ensure that young people are integrated and represented across all aspects of the Summit […]” (Guterres 2019a).
Certainly, more research ought to be done both in terms of the theoretical argumentation proposed in this study, and especially in terms of empirical investigation of other possible examples of GCNs. These could possibly include citizen-led networks formed around global neonationalism15 or
global anti-neoliberalism as these, too, organise and mobilise through online platforms (cf. Segesten and Bossetta 2017; Törnberg and Wahlström 2018).
In addition, different methodologies could be produced to gain more insights on the discursive practices of GCNs or falsify the presented line of argument. While this study laid its focus on the creation and employment of the contestative discourse of GCNs, a discursive institutionalist approach might be more applicable to illustrate the mechanisms of change within transnational regimes as a response to this discourse (cf. Schmidt 2008).
Finally, next to the theoretical insights gained in the present study, the presented argumentation could potentially also bear practical implications for the future design of institutions. Global regimes could implement the contestative power of a global citizenry in their procedures and institutional architecture. Feedback systems that allow for constructive contestation could be directly used to receive the input of an active global citizenry. The findings suggest that such mechanisms would increase both the procedural and substantive legitimacy of transnational regimes. In this regard, future research could investigate the exact mechanisms through which GCNs organise themselves online in order to suggest an implementation of these same means into the decision-making processes of transnational regimes.
Certainly, globalisation and digitalisation remain inevitably progressing phenomena bearing serious implications to the way we conceive and experience global politics, the long-term consequences of which remain yet to be identified and evaluated. The FFFM has demonstrated to transnational decision-makers that processes of constructive contestation from within a global citizenry are possible and that these bear real consequences for the legitimacy and effectiveness of any transnational regime. By specifically inviting individual citizens and networks of citizens to the global negotiation table, UN Secretary-General Guterres has certainly expressed the political will to develop a global climate change regime where members of the transnational society are directly confronted (and enabled to co-shape the rules and norms) with members of a global society. The upcoming Climate Action Summit will mark a decisive event and a practical test for this newly established self-understanding of a global society in which institutional actors and transnational decision-makers share their decision-making power with a politically engaged global citizenry. Whether or not this event will bring the, demanded and indeed needed, climate action remains to be seen. After all, one thing has been made very clear by the youth as they addressed transnational leaders at the COP24: “We’ve come here to let you know that change is coming whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people” (Thunberg 2018).
