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Many believe that the government bears an active role and responsibility on how wealth and income are generated and distributed. With the rapid increase in income inequality in a number of the advanced democracies, it has now become a concern on whether or not this should be considered as a threat. This chapter first examines what types of equality brings concern to the people. An outline of a normative theory of legitimacy which roots regime legitimacy in the satisfaction of an “interest tracking” condition and a political theory suggesting how income inequality can weaken democratic rule is then given.

As a prelude to the three themes in the volume, this chapter explores more generally the turn towards legitimacy in global governance research. The chapter suggests that this turn is partly explained by shortcomings in normative research on global democracy, and the potential of research on legitimacy to overcome those problems. The chapter discusses the merits and demerits of alternative conceptualizations of legitimacy in serving these purposes. The chapter concludes in favor of a normative-sociological understanding of legitimacy that is sensitive to beliefs among members of relevant audiences about the normative qualities of political institutions that are ultimately specified by analysts.

This chapter discusses a number of useful typologies developed in the literature on the concept of legitimacy. It distinguishes, on the one hand, between social and normative legitimacy and, on the other hand, between source legitimacy, process legitimacy, and outcome legitimacy. It connects the concept of legitimacy to other key evaluative concepts, in particular, legality, fairness, justice, and effectiveness. It discusses the place of legitimacy within the operative categories that comprise international courts — structure, process, and outcome — and illustrates the ‘feedback loop’ characterizing changes in levels of legitimacy ‘capital’. It also considers the relationship between judicial legitimacy and key concepts related to the effectiveness of international adjudication, including jurisdiction and admissibility, judicial independence and impartiality, and judgment compliance.

In this chapter, I explore the relevance of religious diversity in international human rights adjudication by focusing on the issue of abortion rights in the United States as a case study. Pointing out the complicated relationship between women’s human rights and religion, I argue that it is a mistake to emphasize religious representation as a direct contributor to the normative legitimacy of either judicial deliberation (a matter of process) or the substantive outcomes of judicial decision-making regarding human rights, whether in domestic or international courts. I first clarify the distinction between normative and sociological legitimacy, and point out two ways in which ethnic, racial, or religious diversity on courts may matter morally. I then describe the US case study regarding reproductive rights in detail, before discussing three reasons for scepticism regarding the claim that religious diversity among judges is a component of normative legitimacy for international courts.

This chapter examines how the theoretical framework presented in this book fits with the substantive chapters. It argues that if the authors maintain their position about motivational agnosticism, they should reconsider whether “de facto authority” is the best label for the kind of impact of international courts (ICs) at various levels that concerns them. At times their claims seem to fit better with an aspiration to map the ICs’ power more generally. The chapter then questions the framework’s explicit bracketing of social legitimacy in the sense of actors’ beliefs about normative legitimacy. It concludes by suggesting one area for future research where scholarship on social and normative legitimacy may in fact be relevant to understand the politics and legitimation strategies of international courts with variable authority.

The concluding chapter revisits the proportionality theory and assesses its explanatory power relative to the theoretical competitors by way of an aggregated cross-case comparison. It finds that the theory fares exceptionally well in both explaining single case outcomes and accounting for variance across cases. The model holds across a variety of institutional designs, levels of authority, issue areas, and crisis types. Second, this chapter turns to the question of how to normatively evaluate IO exceptionalism. It proposes to distinguish three different questions about the normative legitimacy of (a) the adoption and exercise of emergency powers by IOs, (b) the process of constitutional change after IO exceptionalism, and (c) the post-exceptionalist political order of IOs. While the preliminary assessments of the cases on these dimensions are not uniform, overall they warrant skepticism regarding the normative legitimacy of mostly unregulated emergency politics at the global level.

The Conclusion brings together the preceding chapters by explaining that the creation of international anti-corruption norms through non-binding instruments and informal institutions has the potential to diminish the normative legitimacy of these norms and institutions by privileging the interests of powerful States. At the same time, however, non-binding instruments carry significant advantages, including their capacity for change. The Conclusion also outlines avenues for future, empirical research. Future research could address why States have chosen to conclude non-binding anti-corruption instruments, the relationship between legitimacy and compliance, and the domestic implementation of anti-corruption instruments.