Guidance, Expertise, Theoretical Authority and the Legitimacy of International Governance
Abstracts are invited for a two-day workshop to take place at Maynooth University, Ireland on 20 and 21 March 2025. Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be sent to [[email protected]] by 05.01.2025.
This workshop will bring together international lawyers, philosophers, political scientists and scholars in related fields interested in exploring the role that epistemic authority and expertise play in today’s global governance.
Globalization has exposed us to modes of governance quite different to domestic political authority. International organizations, private standard-setting bodies, and even transnational corporations make decisions that profoundly affect our lives, and that seek to shape our behaviour through mechanisms quite unlike the binding and authoritative directives that characterize domestic law. When the IPCC identifies 1.5 degrees as a crucial climate change threshold, it purports only to summarise the results of existing scientific research, yet its conclusions structure the negotiations of states in the UNFCCC framework and are treated by domestic and international courts as making concrete those states’ aspirational commitments. When the OECD announces its BEPS action plan, no state has a legal obligation to follow its guidance, but many do, and it establishes a standard against which all are measured. When ratings agencies downgrade a state’s credit rating they do not pretend to direct or command anyone to do anything, but their decisions are treated as normative by a wide range of public and private bodies, with direct material consequences for states and their citizens. When the EU extends its regulatory influence beyond its borders through the market-based mechanisms, a phenomenon referred to as Brussels Effect, it is clear that there is no traditional authority-subject relationship between the EU and non-member states, yet those states often closely conform to the EU’s norms. Similarly, the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteurs are said to ‘perform a supervisory, consultative, advisory, or monitoring function, rather than one of enforcement’, yet it is difficult to see their influence on domestic legal officials and institutions as something merely exhortatory.
Different terms have been employed to explain the role that these diverse modes of governance play in shaping states behaviours and activities, such as governance through expertise, technocratic governance, soft law, global administrative law etc. We invite scholars to approach these institutions through the lens of legitimate authority. We need to understand what these kinds of institutions are doing before we can ask whether they are entitled to do it, or how we should feel about or act towards their activities and pronouncements. For many it will seem obvious that questions of legitimate authority arise for these institutions (and many are likely to regard at least some of them as obviously illegitimate). But if we are to think about them in these terms, then we need to understand both the kind of authority that they exercise, and what it would mean, and what it would take, for that authority to be legitimate. These are the questions with which this workshop begins.
One influential line of thought distinguishes between practical authorities, which purport to give us reasons for action, and theoretical authorities, which merely give us reasons for belief. Even though both practical and theoretical authorities can furnish individuals and states with second-order exclusionary reasons, they “provide reasons for different things”. Practical authorities influence states’ actions and behaviors by issuing orders and commands, whereas theoretical authorities can give advice and suggestions to states by determining "the way (their) beliefs should adjust to track how things are”. In a nutshell, the law claims practical authority (it tells us what to do), while the weather forecast claims only theoretical authority (it tells us what to believe), but it often makes sense to have regard to both in making our plans.
It is difficult to fit these diverse modes of governance into standard models of institutions as rule makers or reason-givers because they make no claim to bind or to command. Perhaps they can be better understood by analogy to weather forecasters, telling us about the world, and leaving us to shape our plans accordingly? The World Health Organizations is plausibly a theoretical authority capable of giving advice to states as regards what to believe. The WHO may declare, for instance, the existence of an epidemic, namely a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), when there arises an extraordinary global public health crisis that requires immediate action. We may regard the declaration of a PHEIC as an epistemic reason. Its primary purpose is to inform, and draw the attention of, states, NGOs, individuals, and other communities to the possible risks of an outbreak, which may help them cope with it in a timely and proper manner.
Yet it seems inadequate to put all of these institutions having different institutional structures (e.g. private-public and adjudicative-non-adjudicative) under the category of theoretical authorities as mere sources of knowledge, advice or expertise. In many cases, they exercise significant influence over states and individuals, to the point that their “recommendations” and “suggestions” play a functionally equivalent role in states’ practical reasoning with that of an order or command. Their decisions shape our lives in ways analogous to binding domestic and international legal norms. For instance, the formal declaration of PHEIC by the WHO is more than simply a reason to believe that an epidemic is in progress: it also provides a salient coordination point, around which diverse agents can orient their actions to address this threat and may trigger a range of other international or domestic steps that would not happen absent that declaration. Their prescriptions seem to have a different weight in practical reasoning of states than a simple recommendation. The unavoidably value-laden nature of many of these organizations’ judgments, their institutionally privileged positions, and the practical attitudes that other participants in international governance typically take towards them prompts us to wonder about whether there are different shades and forms of exercising theoretical authority over states.
We are interested in exploring the plausibility and the implications of the distinction between epistemic and practical authorities for international organizations with a significant focus on conceptual and normative questions. Relevant questions might include:
- To what extent can specific international institutions be understood as epistemic authorities?
- Is there a non-circular way of explaining the distinction between epistemic and theoretical authorities, as it applies to international institutions?
- Are there ways to distinguish epistemic from practical authority of international institutions other than based on the kinds of reasons that they are capable of giving to their addresses?
- Under what circumstances are international institutions justified in exercising epistemic authority? Can we classify the EU, in its external influence, as an example of epistemic authority? Do we need additional third category of authority to explain these kinds of semi-epistemic functions?
- Does it make sense to analyse the legitimacy of international epistemic authorities? If so, to what extent does the phenomenon of international epistemic authority require us to revise our conceptions of legitimacy? What is the role of state consent in the legitimacy of international epistemic authorities?
- What is the significance of interactions between epistemic authorities and practical authorities, including the ways that the pronouncements of epistemic authorities may trigger formally authoritative directives of practical authorities?
Participants are invited to reflect on these and other questions posed by the increasing role that international epistemic authorities play in global governance. Papers may address questions at a general level, or through a focus on one or more specific regimes, organisations, courts or tribunals. Contributions are invited from scholars in law, philosophy, political science and related disciplines, with a view to developing an interdisciplinary conversation around these questions.
It is intended to seek publication of the workshop papers as a journal special issue or edited volume. We ask participants who have their own institutional funds to use these. Financial support from Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology and the Irish Research Council may allow the organisers to cover participants' travel and accommodation costs where needed, upon request.
Organisers: Prof. Oisin Suttle, Dr. Gürkan Çapar
Expected Participants: Prof. Michael Zürn, Prof. Miodrag Jovanovic, Prof. Fabienne Peter, Dr. Michel Croce
For questions please contact [email protected]