Institutions governing international public affairs are no longer of solely intergovernmental nature. The past 20 years have seen a growing ,transnationalization' of governance beyond the state in the sense that numerous types of non-state actors have risen into positions of private authority. They participate directly in setting and implementation of rules governing international affairs. The boundary between regulators and regulates becomes increasingly blurry as do old and traditional interest constellations and alliances. At the same time – and probably as a result – the transnational sphere and its governance institutions become sights of public contestation. Fierce debates arise not only within the institutions, where policy decisions are to be made among diverse types of actors. But moreover, advocacy and pressure groups who traditionally work with, through and on intergovernmental institutions turn their attention to transnational governance and address their demands and their criticisms to institutions in this sphere. Media and academia, also, assume rules in this new transnational public sphere, in the shaping, legitimating and contesting of it.
The proposed paper investigates the nature of contestation in the transnational sphere aims to establish whether or to what extent public acceptance and the normative standards it refers to differ systematically between international and transnational, public and private forms of governance.
