Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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Actors in the other societal spheres (market and society) start lending<br />
their help to the state. It is perceived as an opportunity to empower<br />
themselves in relation to the other spheres. The cooperation, quite<br />
contradictory, is thus a means to achieve one’s own goals.<br />
Governance in search of legitimacy<br />
As the decision-making center no longer resides solely with the state,<br />
the electoral process linking state and society looses importance as<br />
well, as an instrument of legitimacy. It brings us to the question of how<br />
to theorize legitimacy of the new public-private decision-making units<br />
that arise. Initially, the main concern of global governance theorists<br />
was the creation of order at the global level. The effectiveness of the<br />
outcome that governance could bring about was hence the primary<br />
focus of theorists such as Rosenau. At the end of the 90’s Scharpf<br />
included outcome-effectiveness in the legitimacy-discourse. In order<br />
to give insight into the process of European integration he made the<br />
interesting distinction between input and output legitimacy. Input<br />
legitimacy must be understood as ‘government by the people’. It means<br />
that the voice of the people gets articulated in decision-making. It is the<br />
fairness of the process, such as legal equality guaranteed by elections,<br />
that functions as the criterion of judging input legitimacy. ‘Government<br />
for the people’ than is translated by Scharpf as output legitimacy. The<br />
success of the outcome is the legitimating variable. Scharpf stated that<br />
the EU only has output legitimacy and no input legitimacy because<br />
there is no pre-existing collective identity. Other authors have argued<br />
that governance is perfectly capable of realizing input legitimacy, not<br />
in terms of legally equal input of the citizens a people, but in terms of<br />
participation of excluded groups. The definition of input-legitimacy<br />
by Thomas Risse for example refers to “the participatory quality of the<br />
decision-making process leading to laws and rules” (2006,185) [italics<br />
mine]. That is why authors often state that governance “may indeed<br />
contain germs of ideas that may permit greater openness, inclusion<br />
and empowerment of hitherto excluded or marginalized social groups”<br />
(Swynge<strong>do</strong>uw 2005, 1993). The question is what the implications are of<br />
substituting legally equal input for participatory input. Will it result in<br />
an empowerment of excluded groups or will it increase inequalities?<br />
41<br />
GOVERNANCE<br />
THROUGH THE LENS OF<br />
REPRESENTATION<br />
Femmy Thewissen