This chapter conceptualizes deference as an international court’s acceptance of the state’s exercise of authority. It presents a method for measuring deference that combines case outcomes, interpretation, and remedial orders. The chapter introduces a novel theoretical account of deference. This explanation centers on a court’s strategic space, or the range of possible decisions that will satisfy a court’s legal and political imperatives, and argues that two political factors determine this strategic space: formal independence and political fragmentation. The former concerns the formal rules that safeguard independence while the latter refers to the heterogeneity of states’ preferences. These two constraints affect deference by way of their impact on a court’s legitimacy and the feasibility and credibility of state resistance. The theoretical account also considers the role of persuasive argumentation, public legitimation, and past resistance. This explanation is distinguished from accounts that emphasize judicial support networks and political norms and legal culture.

This chapter summarizes the empirical findings by comparing the three international courts. It shows that the EACJ has been the most deferential of the three courts, followed by the CCJ, and the African Court has been the least deferential. At the same time, the EACJ has the narrowest strategic space, the African Court the broadest and the CCJ lies between. The comparative analysis corroborates the theoretical argument of the book as each court’s deference closely aligns with its degree of formal independence and the extent of political fragmentation among its member states. The chapter revisits the book’s core argument by discussing the scope of the argument and considering its generalizability. It concludes with a discussion of the book’s implications for interdisciplinary research on international courts and IR literature on IOs in contemporary world politics.

This chapter concludes the book with normative messages on contexts where states can trust public cooperation without coercion, addressing jurisprudential and normative aspects of governments gaining public cooperation.

Chapter 4 involves a focus on the legitimacy and effectiveness of proxy-style institutions for future generations. It sets out criteria for assessing the legitimacy of such institutions based on Klaus Dingwerth, Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, and Antto Vihma. Criteria for assessing the legitimacy of international tribunals are developed based on an extension of Bogdandy and Venzke’s work with the idea of accountability to the demos being extended to include future generations. A concept of ‘future legitimacy’ is introduced which involves assessing institutions in operation now from the perspective of future generations when climate change is predicted to be ravaging the planet. Criteria for effectiveness are elaborated involving the Paris Agreement goals, as well as an assessment of the promotion of intergenerational justice and the values of inclusiveness, solidarity and addressing vulnerability. Particular challenges in application of these criteria in the context of international law and related institutions which represent future generations are discussed.

Chapter 8 makes a preliminary assessment of the likely effectiveness of the proposed UN special envoy for future generations by examining this proposal through the lens of three frameworks. These frameworks are, firstly, the rationale or normative basis for such a proposal measured against the principles of intergenerational justice, solidarity and vulnerability set out in Chapter 3 of the book. Next, the special envoy proposal is evaluated in terms of its legitimacy and effectiveness using the criteria elaborated in Chapter 5 (inclusive representation, democratic control in the form of accountability and transparency, deliberation, source-based/input legitimacy in terms of expertise, legal legitimacy, tradition and discourse, substantial/output legitimacy in terms of effectiveness and equity). The possible functions of a special envoy are examined and recommendations are made as to what mandate the special envoy should have, applying the matrix of proxy functions elaborated earlier in this book, which involves breaking proxy representation down into its functions (representative, compliance, reform and norm entrepreneurial). Finally, an overarching framework is proposed for measuring the potential effectiveness of the special envoy which incorporates both frameworks – proxy representation functions and democratic legitimacy.

Affordable access to quality health and care is generally recognised as a basic human need and one of the grand challenges society currently faces, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the focus on public health is driving a predominantly human-centric approach to One Health initiatives. Furthermore, the concerted reliance on innovation and technology-driven solutions may exacerbate the problem. Without the appropriate legal and policy framework to incentivise and capture the social value of research and innovation, there is a risk the resulting solutions will fail to achieve the balance between animal, environment, and human health. This chapter presents a legally supported approach, informed by the intellectual property framework and the policy objectives of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Value-Based Health and Care (VBHC) principles, to support the implementation of a true One Health framework. This enables the development of legal tools that will give credibility, legitimacy, and accountability to the design, development, and implementation of a sustainable One Health framework through meaningful and inclusive societal engagement.

The conclusion briefly examines the impact of the Ichigo Offensive on Nationalist military provisioning infrastructures. Although US aid and advice resulted in logistical overhauls for specified divisions, improvements to provisioning and standards of living within the Chinese armies were limited in both scope and degree. Even after Japan’s abrupt surrender, grain retained its political and emotive connotations to remain an effective propaganda trope in the Chinese civil war. To feed its armies and sustain the war against Japan, the Nationalists had systematically extracted resources at civilian expense, a reality which gave the post-1945 CCP significant political leverage. In World War II’s longest-standing theater, food mattered most – to rival governments and regimes, to armies, and to civilians.

The relationship between change and international legitimacy is an important topic. History (international and national history) and legitimacy do not stand still but change over time. There is a relationship of mutual influence and dependency between the evolution of history, including the organization of international relations in it, and the evolution of legitimacy. As history evolves, the culture of legitimacy evolves; and as legitimacy evolves, history evolves. Keeping this in mind, the chapter first discusses the fact that scholars have tended to focus on the perceived importance of stability in analyses of legitimacy and change. Second, using that discussion as a foundation, the chapter contends that the goal of an international order should be the socialization of instability. Third, the chapter analyzes the relationship between the characteristics of an international order, or part of it, and the question of its change, including change and stability and their relation to legitimacy.

Chapter 6 highlights a few implications for political legitimacy and the theory of legitimacy that can be derived from some of the key points that I have touched upon in Chapters 4 and 5. The implications include the following: (1) the character of a theory of political legitimacy is at the same time conservative and progressive, albeit more progressive than conservative; (2) the scope of evaluation and judgment that a theory of political legitimacy entails must avoid two dangerous paths: the first one is thinking that it is not possible to produce valid evaluations and judgments of legitimacy, and the second one is evaluating and judging all political situations from one’s own perspective; (3) evidence—that is, what people think and feel—can be called upon and mobilized for the evaluation and judgment of legitimacy; and (4) contemporary politics is especially relevant to the discussion of legitimacy.

This chapter is a short intellectual biography focusing on my interest and engagement in questions of political legitimacy over the years. The chapter is organized into three parts. I begin by discussing how the issue of legitimacy has been one of my key intellectual concerns ever since I started to do research on politics, initially in the context of the study of political and legal regimes in Latin America (Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay). Next, I highlight my understanding of political legitimacy as a responsibility and what this means for the evaluation and judgment of politics. This understanding builds on one of my previous books, Legitimacy and Politics: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right and Political Responsibility. Finally, I focus on how, gradually, in particular in connection with my work with the United Nations (UN), I became interested in the question of political legitimacy at the international level.

This chapter completes the act of setting the stage for the rest of the book by stressing the significance of the relationship between legitimacy and law, at the national level as well as at the international level. Legitimacy and law do not have a simple and straightforward relationship—far from it. Highlighting four features of this relationship helps shed light on the complexity of their relationship and serves as a preview of some of the issues that will be addressed throughout the book. These four features are the paradoxical character of the relationship between legitimacy and law; the unavoidable, yet at times, problematic role of values in the legitimacy–law nexus; the need for legitimacy and law to not be entirely captive of the power on which they depend; and the nature of these features for legitimacy and law at the international level.

In this book, I have tried to make sense of legitimacy at the international level, especially in relation to international law. I have paid a lot of attention to international law, in particular aligned with the demands of legitimacy and justice. But international law is only one aspect of the forces and the ecosystem that shape international order. Therefore, alone it cannot engineer the change that the international system requires today. This change has to be part of a more comprehensive approach. Here is not the place to offer a full account of the areas on which research could concentrate in the future to further encourage justice and legitimacy at the international level. However, it is worthwhile to present a general overview of these areas. In particular, three domains offer a possible road map for facilitating a constructive path forward: globalization, emotions and passions in social life, and the geopolitics of tomorrow.

The changes at play in the contemporary world bring about challenges that are impacting political legitimacy. They make legitimacy at the same time more problematic and more relevant, at both the national and international levels. From this perspective, how these changes and challenges are going to be addressed in the coming years is likely to determine, to a large extent, the evolution of political legitimacy—nationally and internationally. Among the changes and challenges underway, and their associated events and trends, I highlight the following eight: (1) the challenge of integration and disintegration, (2) the economic and financial challenge, (3) the geopolitical challenge, (4) the normative challenge, (5) the technological challenge, (6) the reassessment of globalization challenge, (7) the crisis of democracy challenge, and (8) the governance challenge. I unpack them in turn and, for each of them, allude to their possible meaning and implications for political legitimacy.