February 2003
Discussions of global governance inevitably include the 'L' word - 'legitimacy'. Critics often state that NGOs have no right to participate in global debates, because they lack ‘legitimacy'. By contrast, governments are supposed to possess legitimacy because they are 'elected'. Such critiques are simplistic but influential. Are the critics right? Michael Edwards,The Ford Foundation, looks at the question of NGO legitimacy, an issue that underlies the future of global citizen action and global governance.
Over the past ten years, NGOs have helped to change the language of debates around issues such as debt relief, monitor global agreements in areas such as forest certification and child labour, and negotiate new regimes like the Ottawa Treaty on landmines. In the process, they have challenged the assumption that governments represent the public interest, and questioned the ability of representative democracy to manage the complex political demands of pluralistic societies. Criticisms of NGO legitimacy are really echoes of a wider debate about different forms of democracy, but they ignore the fact that direct and electoral politics tend to complement rather than displace each other at local and national levels.
Voicing an opinion is the bedrock of participatory democracy (we used to call it 'freedom of speech'), and those who speak out do not need to be formally representative of a constituency. Accountability to a constituency, on the other hand, is the bedrock of representative democracy, requiring formal procedures like elections to ensure that decisions are fairly reached. Participatory democracy is the natural territory of NGOs, whereas representative democracy is the natural territory of governments. But both are needed if politics is to function in the public interest. Without sustained public pressure, governments rarely fulfil the promises they make on Election Day. But without elections, it is difficult to reconcile the different interests and agendas that exist in civil society.
This is just as true at the global level. The problem is that few political structures exist at the global level to balance these different forms of democracy, and this makes it easier for NGOs to cross the boundary between advocacy and representation, or 'voice' and 'vote', in their international advocacy work. The result may be gridlock, or chaotic policy-creation processes open to manipulation by the loudest and strongest groups - a problem already seen in the special interest politics of industrial democracies like the United States, and international negotiations like the Genoa G8 Summit last year.
Validating Claims
Where does that leave us on the 'L' word? Legitimacy is generally understood as the right to be and do something in society, a sense that an organisation is lawful, admissible and justified in its chosen course of action. But there are many ways to validate these claims - through representation (if NGOs have a formal membership that can hold leaders accountable for the positions they take), through competence and expertise (if NGOs are recognised as bringing valuable knowledge and skills to the table by other legitimate bodies), through the law (if NGOs comply with non-profit legislation, regulation, and effective oversight by their trustees), and through the moral claims of NGOs to promote the public interest, or at least be in sympathy with large segments of public opinion. Usually, NGOs derive their legitimacy from a mix of all four.
Therefore, NGOs do not have to be member-controlled to be legitimate, but they do have to be transparent and accountable for their actions if their claims to legitimacy are to be maintained, and it is here that significant room for improvement remains. If legitimacy is claimed through representation (even in the broad sense of public opinion), NGOs must be able to show who it is they represent and how. If it is claimed through expertise, they must be able to show how their positions have been derived, and what depth of rigor has been used. But conflating different forms of legitimacy for different groups - as the critics do - confuses the debate and increases the likelihood that criticisms will be used to exclude rather than structure the involvement of dissenting voices.
Any NGO is entitled to voice an opinion, so even if global networks lack fully democratic systems of governance and accountability, the increasing voice of civil society adds an essential layer of checks and balances into the international system, and helps to ensure that excluded views are heard. Negotiating a treaty, however, is a very different matter, when formal rules are needed to structure decision-making by elected governments. Problems of legitimacy are not, therefore, a justification for turning back the tide of global citizen action, but they are a challenge to structure it in ways that combat, rather than accentuate, existing social, economic and political inequalities. This is the real challenge for NGOs in the century to come.
Micahel Edwards is Director, Governance and Civil Society, at The Ford Foundation in New York, His book ‘Global Citizen Action' (Earthscan 2001) co-edited with John Gaventa, provides a more in depth analysis of the issues raised in this article.
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