Open AccessHow to solve a crisis of legitimacy?
Author(s) -
Anne Reiff
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
politikon
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1583-3984
pISSN - 2414-6633
DOI - 10.22151/politikon.23.7
Subject(s) - legitimation , legitimacy , civil society , political science , power (physics) , corporate governance , democratic legitimacy , global governance , empirical research , public administration , political economy , inequality , sociology , law and economics , public relations , politics , law , epistemology , economics , management , mathematical analysis , philosophy , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics
Who participates in the discourse of legitimation taking place in the WTO Public Forum and how do the participants evaluate the World Trade Organization (WTO)? This paper offers two empirical insights into the phenomenon of Global Governance. Firstly, the discourse of legitimation is analyzed with a quantitative text analytical tool. Secondly, as the framework of the discourse is a forum founded by the WTO to start dialogue with civil-society after the crisis of legitimacy in the 1990s, it sheds light on a strategy of Re-legitimation. The empirical results show that (1) the discourse in the forum is “emptying-out” as NGOs are largely replaced by Academia and national politicians and (2) that it is limited by power inequalities between the actors.