The link between self-legitimation and group agency – Evidence from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The UN human rights treaty bodies – expert bodies that monitor how states implement their obligations under the global human rights conventions – are frequently referred to as actors. But how do these bodies develop group agency? After all, this is not obvious, given that the treaty bodies suffer from resource shortcomings, possess a heterogeneous membership and comprise members that are not fully independent from the conventions’ contracting states. We argue that inward-oriented self-legitimation has an important effect on the ability of treaty bodies to become group agents. Inward-oriented self-legitimation implies that a group, or individual members, apply strategies that are to ascribe legitimacy onto the group in the eyes of the group’s members. Inward-oriented self-legitimation can have two effects: it can foster beliefs in the group’s legitimacy and thus elicit voluntary cooperation in the group, and it can provide incentives for cooperative behaviour among non-cooperative group members as obstruction and passivity become costly. We base our claim on evidence from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Based on qualitative content analysis of relevant Committee documents we show that self-legitimation practices are commonplace. Based on interviews with Committee experts we provide evidence that self-legitimation has an effect on the emergence of group agency.