This paper explores the extent to which ''the West'' has historically been deployed as both a basis for international order and as a claim to legitimacy. The major function of the West has been its power to legitimise the existing Western global order and the superior position of those claimed to be Western. Still, legitimation requires that actors (like states) continuously seek legitimation or claim legitimacy for certain ideas, norms and policies upon which order is based. As a legitimising narrative, however, the West is fuzzy and vague. There is no authority to speak in the name of the West and the West eludes all fixed definitions of using it. The West is a highly amorphous concept which it has been possible for different actors to fill with different meanings. In this respect, the paper argues that the West appears to be a uniquely open concept, embracing many traditions and historical narrations and perpetually able to escape the attempts of any one actor to be able to claim rights of authorship over the concept. Thus, despite recurrent proclamations that the West is in decline it has frequently confounded its doomsayers by rejuvenating itself in different form. In this respect, tensions in transatlantic relations during the Bush administration and over the war on terror might be better understood, not as presaging the West''s imminent destruction, but rather the existence of contending representations or models over how best to organise global politics, and can thus be regarded as indicating a crisis concerning the legitimizing power of the West. This paper is therefore concerned with exploring what provides the West with utility such that political actors both inside and beyond the West continue to find reason to deploy it for legitimizing a range of political projects and communities.
