The Concept of Legitimacy in International Relations: History, Use, Rhetorical Effects

This paper analysis the history, the contemporary use and the rhetorical (or performative) effects of the concept of legitimacy in International Relations (IR). Although one of the oldest and most prominent concepts of our political language, the concept of legitimacy was for a long time almost exclusively used in the domestic political and/or legal discourse. Recent years, however, witnessed an increasing use of the concept in the academic discipline of IR as well as in world politics (see, e.g., the speech-act 'illegal but legitimate' after NATO's Kosovo bombing). The paper draws, in its first part, attention on the process of ‘translation‘ from the domestic to the international sphere and addresses some problems of this trajectory. It examines, then, the contemporary use of the concept by different IR-theories and, here, especially by neoliberal institutionalism and a moderate version of constructivism. The last part, analysis the rhetorical effects of the concept of legitimacy in IR. Here, the main point is, that the increasing use of 'legitimacy' can be understood as an attempt of mainstream IR-theories to adapt its vocabulary to a fluid, so-called post-national constellation and to overcome modern dichotomies such as politics/law, realism/idealism, domestic/international or empirical/normative. But, it is argued, that this attempt creates serious problems by reifying existing power structures.