Introduction
When the Vikings arrived in the Orkney Islands in the eighth century, they had little to base a claim to authority on. Sensing a need to be accepted as legitimate rulers by the inhabitants of the islands, they found a way of signalling that their claim to the land was justified: they buried their dead in or near the burial sites established by the former rulers.Footnote 1 This self-legitimation practice was not confined to Orkney. Reuse of ancient burial sites was common in Viking Age southern Scandinavia, where it was adopted by individuals with high social status for the purpose of ‘legitimizing their control and claims over land’.Footnote 2
Something similar to what the Vikings did in Orkney can be seen to be done by international institutions: they too associate themselves with others they expect to be regarded as legitimate by relevant audiences. In doing so, they seek to elicit acceptance of their authority. The first declaration issued by the G6, for instance, the G7’s predecessor, explicitly linked the new forum to established institutions such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD);Footnote 3 the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) uses its website to showcase its Permanent Observer Status in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly;Footnote 4 and international courts cite judgments handed down in national courts to legitimate their own.Footnote 5
That international institutions should resort to association as a self-legitimation practice is not self-evident because institutions that operate in the same field frequently compete for resources and recognition. Recent scholarship has therefore begun to theorise and empirically probe ‘legitimation by differentiation’, a strategy focused on highlighting their own competitive advantage employed by international organisations (IOs) that find themselves in competition with other IOs.Footnote 6 It has also been shown that IOs with overlapping mandates, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), cooperate in day-to-day activities but publicly demarcate themselves from each other when they portray themselves as the ‘lead authority for a particular global problem’.Footnote 7 Legitimation by differentiation has also been recorded in organisations that replace others, such as the African Union (AU), which initially tried to build its legitimacy by distinguishing itself from its predecessor.Footnote 8
The growing body of research on the self-legitimation of international institutions has not ignored what I call ‘relational legitimation’. However, it is striking that scholars have so far focused mostly on the well-known triad of normative justifications – social purpose, procedures, and performance.Footnote 9 There are notable exceptions that show that international institutions build relations with relevant others for the purpose of legitimation.Footnote 10 Nonetheless, we lack a theorisation of the concept of relational legitimation and need more empirical research on international institutions’ relational legitimation practices. Addressing this gap is important. It helps us develop a more comprehensive account of how international institutions’ embeddedness in their environment shapes their legitimation practices and complements accounts that focus on the relationship between governing actors and their audiences.Footnote 11 It also is of practical relevance in times when international institutions are increasingly contested. Limited insights in international institutions’ legitimation practices that overlook the role of relation-building among governing actors hinder the development of sound policy advice. Furthermore, examining who is deemed worthy of being referenced, and who is not, provides valuable insights into global (dis-)integration processes. The aim of this article is, therefore, to theorise relational legitimation and investigate empirically the extent to which it is a meaningful legitimation practice undertaken by international institutions and one that follows distinctive patterns.
Relational legitimation has its roots in relational sociology. Relational sociology, or relationalism, treats relations as primordial concepts and posits that agency and authority always derive from relations.Footnote 12 If we bring together relationalism and legitimation theory, we can conclude that international institutions legitimate themselves by building relations with relevant others. They may point out that they are authorised by them, they may align themselves with their positions and actions, or they may report instances of cooperation. A relevant other is any actor or institution considered legitimate by a relevant audience. Nonetheless, we should expect international institutions to build relations primarily with epistemic authorities (especially those from the West) and other institutions belonging to the same institutional family.
I draw on evidence from a case study on the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). The Special Procedures are independent experts mandated to collect information and provide advice to states on specific human-rights-related topics. Qualitative content analysis of the annual thematic reports of two Special Procedures allows me to draw the following conclusions. First, there is widespread evidence of relational legitimation. Second, all three relational legitimation frames are employed, with alignment being employed most often. Third, the Special Procedures do indeed predominantly build relations with epistemic authorities (especially those from the West) and actors and institutions from the wider UN family. Finally, I explore the conditions under which the findings may hold for other cases.
The article makes two broader contributions. It theorises and empirically corroborates a practice that has hitherto been neglected in the growing literature on the legitimation of international institutions. Specifically, it puts the focus on a legitimation practice that exploits an important dimension of their embeddedness in their environment and highlights dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in legitimation practices. In doing so, it helps develop a more comprehensive account of the institutions’ legitimation practices that benefits empirical research into general questions relating to their origins and consequences. Furthermore, it adds to the literature on relationalism by focusing on legitimation through relation-building, a subject that has so far not been elaborated on specifically, thus also bringing empirical evidence into the literature on relationalism that has hitherto largely consisted of theoretical work.
The article is structured as follows. The next section introduces relational legitimation. The subsequent sections outline the article’s empirical strategy and present its findings. The final section concludes.
Relational legitimation
Legitimacy and legitimation
Legitimacy is commonly defined as a ‘generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions’.Footnote 13 Legitimation is the ascription of legitimacy to an actor or institution that justifies their exercise of authority, and hence purposeful action intended to ‘shape … audiences’ legitimacy beliefs’.Footnote 14
Legitimacy matters for international institutions. Higher levels of authority and the end of the permissive consensus have raised expectations that international institutions should be perceived as legitimate by relevant audiences.Footnote 15 From a functionalist perspective, legitimacy helps them engage in rule-making and promotes compliance among rule addressees.Footnote 16 It also helps them stand up to their competitorsFootnote 17 or expand their scope of action.Footnote 18
As a consequence, international institutions engage in self-legitimation vis-à-vis targeted audiences with whom legitimacy claims are supposed to resonate, or who might serve as intermediary audiences who influence the legitimacy beliefs of other audiences.Footnote 19 Legitimation typically involves discursive, institutional, and/or behavioural practices. This article focuses on discursive practices – hence on day-to-day public justifications and other statements that construct or invoke specific narratives.Footnote 20 Such practices address different external audiences that are constituencies or observers of the institutions, including states and their publics (hence those affected by their rules) and civil society actors.Footnote 21 Self-legitimation may also have an identity-building dimension when addressed to an audience within the institution, such as its own staff.Footnote 22 Self-legitimation may be enacted collectively by an entire institution, or separately by members or individual bodies within it.Footnote 23 Much of the research on international institutions’ (self-)legitimation has centred on formal IOs,Footnote 24 but, conceptually, legitimation can be applied to collective and individual social objects alike.Footnote 25
There is an emerging consensus in contemporary research on the legitimation of international institutions that three different normative justifications are central to the process: international institutions may ascribe legitimacy to themselves by highlighting the moral value of their purpose, the fairness of their procedures, or their performance in terms of fulfilling their mandate.Footnote 26 Relational legitimation, however, goes beyond this well-established triad. In essence, it assumes that international institutions build and maintain their legitimacy by associating themselves with other actors or institutions that are presumed to be legitimate.
Relationalism and relational legitimation
That relations matter for actors in several important ways is at the core of the theory of relationalism, whose key assumption is that relations, and not actors, are ‘analytical primitives’.Footnote 27 Relations are fluid and change as a result of the transactions that take place between the entities they link.Footnote 28 Relationalists assume that subjects are defined in their relations with others.Footnote 29 They engage in ‘bridging’, meaning that they establish ‘links between actors, practices and discourse’ and undertake ‘translation, coordination and alignment between perspectives’.Footnote 30 Hence, following a relational ontology, ‘entities arise from a web of relations’.Footnote 31 Actors are therefore always ‘actors-in-relations’, implying that the ‘identities and roles of social actors are shaped by social relations’.Footnote 32
Furthermore, an actor’s or institution’s agency, power, and legitimacy also derive from their relationships with others. Hence, agency is ‘created by networks of relations’ and is metaphorically conceived as ‘the dancer’s social space within the figuration or configuration’.Footnote 33 Relations with others give actors power,Footnote 34 implying that power is ‘relational power’,Footnote 35 inasmuch as ‘larger relational circles’ and ‘more … important others in these circles’ confer power.Footnote 36 It is therefore the ‘character of relationships’ between relevant actors that counts most in global governance.Footnote 37 Even more significant for this article is the assumption that a favourable position in a web also confers legitimacy, given that the latter is closely tied to recognition in relationships.Footnote 38 IOs such as the UN, for instance, appoint and align themselves with experts in the expectation that relationship-building will boost their legitimacy.Footnote 39
Relational legitimation, as used in this article, brings these insights from relationalism together with legitimation theory. It assumes that the institutional environment is key to legitimation and that actors or institutions may increase and sustain their legitimacy by establishing links to other presumably legitimate entities. Its underlying mechanism is the anticipated use of heuristics in the formation of legitimacy beliefs by relevant audiences. Heuristics help individuals develop attitudes in complex situations by providing cognitive shortcuts.Footnote 40 The concept has already been used in research on legitimacy beliefs to show that citizens form beliefs about IOs by extrapolating from their attitudes towards domestic institutionsFootnote 41 or other IOs,Footnote 42 by comparing them to reference organisations,Footnote 43 or by following cues from elites.Footnote 44 Relational legitimation also subscribes to the idea that an institution’s inherent properties – its social purpose, procedures, or performance – are not necessarily key to legitimation narratives or legitimacy beliefs. Instead, an institution can use the legitimacy of any actors or institutions with which it builds relations as a cognitive shortcut to its own legitimacy – assuming that relevant audiences form their legitimacy beliefs on the basis of the beliefs they hold about related actors or institutions. Normative justifications thus still matter in relational legitimation. But they matter primarily inasmuch as they relate to the actors and institutions with which an institution builds relations for the purpose of self-legitimation.
Scholars have not entirely neglected the idea that international institutions’ self-legitimation practices may involve building relations with relevant others. It has been argued that legitimacy ‘can be exported by association from the holder to other actors’.Footnote 45 It has also been shown that international institutions – whether major organisations with large bureaucracies,Footnote 46 smaller entities within IOs,Footnote 47 or transnational regulatory regimesFootnote 48 – engage in relation-building to legitimate themselves.
It is striking, however, that important recent publications on the legitimation of international institutions ignore relation-building. Zürn lists several legitimation narratives, including legal, participatory, and fairness narratives, but leaves out those that international institutions use to build relations with others.Footnote 49 Schmidtke et al. distinguish between legitimation standards related to procedure, performance, and purpose, on the one hand, and technocracy, liberalism, and communitarianism, on the other, but likewise disregard relation-building,Footnote 50 as do Dellmuth and Tallberg, who differentiate between legitimating messages that focus on social purpose, authority, procedures, and performance.Footnote 51 Finally, Steffek’s comprehensive account of the state of the art in research on the legitimacy and legitimation of IOs specifies ‘normative arguments, pertaining to goals, procedures, and outputs of governance’ as the content of international institutions’ self-legitimation but does not take association into account.Footnote 52
The aim of this article, by contrast, is to put relational legitimation centre stage. This is important for two reasons. First, studying international institutions’ legitimation practices lacks an important dimension if it does not take relation-building into account. Scholars who study them are interested in their origins, in how legitimation practices vary among international institutions, and in the effects of legitimation on citizens’ legitimacy beliefs.Footnote 53 Taking relational legitimation practices into account enables these important questions to be addressed more comprehensively.
Second, studying international institutions’ relational legitimation practices is important in its own right. Recent scholarship has concentrated on one relational dimension of legitimation: the relationship between governing actors and their audiences. It has been argued that perceptions of the legitimacy of international institutions and their legitimation practices are influenced by the cognitive schemata that audiences rely onFootnote 54 and by how audiences perceive other institutions.Footnote 55 Legitimation has also been described as a process of ‘congruence-finding’ in which the actors who enact legitimation practices and relevant audiences alter their normative expectations.Footnote 56 Zooming in on another relational dimension of legitimation, the relation-building practices of governing actors, complements this research. It provides another perspective on how international institutions’ embeddedness in their environment shapes their legitimation practices. In addition, it lays open how international institutions frame the nature of their relationships with relevant others and how dynamics of inclusion and exclusion structure those practices.
Relational legitimation frames
Relational legitimation, as used in this article, is an observable discursive practice. I assume that international institutions, when linking themselves to relevant others, use rhetoric that relates to particular frames, namely those that highlight authorisation, alignment, and cooperation. This rhetoric may be based on ‘explicit rationalization – i.e. articulating reasons why an authority has a right to rule’ and contain a clear evaluative element; it may also be implicit, relying on ‘messages of positive impressions of their rule’Footnote 57 or consisting of ‘everyday practices of governance’,Footnote 58 without involving explicit evaluation.
First, highlighting authorisation by others that are presumed to be legitimate is likely to be an important relational legitimation frame. References to authorisation by actors and institutions in an organisation’s (or system of authority’s) environment are believed to be an important resource that influences legitimacy beliefs and promotes rule-following behaviour, as are references to the authority of law.Footnote 59 Legitimation rhetoric that refers to authorisation is based on a ‘belief in a superior power’ that can justify an entity’s exercise of power.Footnote 60 Traditionally, the legitimacy of global governance institutions was seen as primarily stemming from state consent, that is, states’ acceptance of the rules to which the institutions bind them.Footnote 61 Where bodies in an international institution have been created by another body within that same institution, reporting that intra-institutional authorisation can be a source of legitimacy, too. International institutions may also refer to less formal forms of authorisation, when they, for example, report that relevant others welcome their being authorised to fulfil their mandate.
Empirical research suggests that authorisation is an important legitimation practice used by states and international institutions alike. Legitimation in the form of formal authorisation by the UN has been important for states that want to conduct military interventions.Footnote 62 It has also been shown that publics in democratic states view military interventions by their governments more favourably if the interventions are authorised by multilateral institutions that they consider legitimate.Footnote 63 IOs seek authorisation by other IOs to legitimate their actions, too. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), for instance, went to great lengths to justify its intervention in Kosovo by reference to UN Security Council resolutions that, it argued, authorised the intervention.Footnote 64
Second, emphasising alignment with prestigious others constitutes another legitimation frame. Scholarship on isomorphism among IOs has argued that they tend to align their institutional design with the designs of other IOs to gain ‘legitimacy benefits’.Footnote 65 Alignment, as used in this article, refers to rhetoric from international institutions that signals that they share the values and positions of relevant others or that they are acting in line with the way that relevant others act. Alignment has been identified as a relational legitimation practice engaged in by international courts. It has been shown that judges in international courts ‘invoke external precedent as “persuasive authority”’, assuming that they expect their judgments to be more persuasive and legitimate if they can argue that authoritative sources have come to the same conclusions.Footnote 66 Similarly, judges in international courts cite scholarly writings in their jurisprudence.Footnote 67
Alignment with relevant others and the frames they use has also been identified as a legitimation practice used by transnational advocacy groups. Non-state human rights organisations, for instance, build relations with each other to get the ‘political clout that come[s] from being connected to other organizations also working for human rights improvement’.Footnote 68 Frame alignment among the members of a movement is also believed to provide legitimacy benefits for the movement as a whole.Footnote 69 Moreover, it is believed to be easier for transnational civil society actors to get support for their own ideas if these can be constructed as being aligned with existing onesFootnote 70 or if they use frames that resonate with those accepted by their (intermediary) targets.Footnote 71
Third, international institutions legitimate themselves by building actual ties and cooperating with others they want to be associated with, then reporting on these cooperative relationships. IOs, accordingly, ‘seek external validation for their authority claims … through links and partnerships with other organizations which bestow a stamp of approval and recognition of authority’.Footnote 72 They try to draw powerful states and other important organisations into their workFootnote 73 or open up to civil society actorsFootnote 74 in an effort to improve their legitimacy. The World Bank and the IMF, for example, have set up dialogue forums with civil society actors as an ‘institutional legitimation strategy’Footnote 75 and advertise them on their websites.
Cooperation as a relational legitimation practice is also discussed in management studies and network theory. Accordingly, organisations try to legitimate themselves by forming strategic alliances with other organisations. Building coalitions may not only have material benefits for those that pool their resources but also enables firms that are in greater need of legitimation to borrow the legitimacy of already-approved organisations.Footnote 76 Similarly, scholars using network theory see networking as a legitimation practice, with actors who occupy key node points in a network benefiting disproportionately.Footnote 77 Transnational social movements, for example, employ networking as a ‘deliberate attempt to leverage connectivity for organizational legitimacy’, with ‘claiming a connection to another organisation’ being an effective legitimation device.Footnote 78
Reference objects
Who are the actors or institutions that international institutions build relations with for the purpose of self-legitimation vis-à-vis relevant audiences? Generally, they may be any deemed to possess legitimacy in the eyes of relevant audiences within or outside the institution. This may encompass international courts, other IOs, entities of the same institutional family, states, representatives of civil society, academics, media, and business actors. Yet two types of respected others are likely to be particularly attractive: epistemic authorities (especially those from the West) and members of the same institutional family.
International institutions use knowledge provided by epistemic authorities to take well-founded decisions and govern effectively.Footnote 79 Yet they also forge links with epistemic authorities for the purpose of self-legitimation. They often link up with, or draw on knowledge provided by, experts to gain legitimacy.Footnote 80 They also associate themselves with civil society actors in the hope that they can benefit from their legitimacy.Footnote 81 Such behaviour is attractive to international institutions for several reasons. Generally, epistemic authorities are seen as producing ‘“legitimate” knowledge’.Footnote 82 Academics, who draw on the status of science, are seen as possessing non-partisan expert knowledge,Footnote 83 while civil society actors derive their status as authorities from claiming moral integrity.Footnote 84 Hence, building relations with academics may help international institutions cloak themselves in an aura of expertise and justify cause-and-effect claims, while association with civil society actors may help them justify moral claims.
However, not all academics or academic institutions and civil society actors may be equally regarded by international institutions as useful epistemic authorities to build relations with. For self-legitimation purposes, we should expect references to be made primarily to epistemic authorities from the West. Knowledge from the Global South is frequently excluded on account of ‘racial stratifications in meaning-making processes’.Footnote 85 This applies to academia, where Western knowledge often possesses higher status.Footnote 86 Scholars have also observed social hierarchies among civil society actors, with lower-status actors being less likely to have their arguments heard and recognised.Footnote 87 Accordingly, IOs such as the World Bank have been shown to be more likely to open up to Western civil society actors than to those from other regions.Footnote 88
We should also expect international institutions to build links to similar institutions within the same family. New UN bodies, for instance, tend to forge links with already-established UN bodies to capitalise on their ‘UN family resemblance’.Footnote 89 UN bodies also portray themselves as ‘cooperative partner[s]’, since ‘system-wide coherence and coordination with other members of the UN system became more central as legitimacy standards after 1990’.Footnote 90 This expectation draws inspiration from social identity theory, which posits that actors define their group membership through self-categorisation and by accentuating similarities between themselves and other members of the same category.Footnote 91 It also draws inspiration from organisational sociologists who suggest that organisations can enhance their legitimacy if they receive endorsements from respected others in their environmentFootnote 92 or present themselves as ‘being similar to other organizations in their fields’.Footnote 93
Empirical strategy
This article investigates relational legitimation practices adopted by international institutions. Specifically, it aims to shed light on the scope of the relational legitimation practices that international institutions employ, the specific relational legitimation frames they use, and the reference objects of their relation-building endeavours.
Case selection
I have chosen the UN HRC’s Special Procedures for my empirical analysis. The Special Procedures are independent experts or small groups of experts that are Charter-based institutions and receive limited administrative support from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).Footnote 94 They are appointed by the HRC, have thematic or country mandates for fixed terms, provide advice to UN member states, and report on states’ behaviour to the HRC.Footnote 95 The mandate-holders consider themselves part of the UN, although they do not receive instructions from any UN entity when discharging their mandates.Footnote 96
The first Special Procedures were established about 60 years ago, and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan famously described them as the ‘crown jewels’ of the UN human rights regime.Footnote 97 Nonetheless, the Special Procedures still need to engage in self-legitimation: They cannot base their authority on formal state consent,Footnote 98 and their expert status is ‘only valid when socially affirmed’.Footnote 99 Their advice is not legally binding, and they have no means of coercing states into cooperating with them or following their advice.Footnote 100 I have, therefore, chosen a case in which I can reasonably expect to observe relational legitimation, if it occurs. At the same time, the Special Procedures are not the easiest case for observing relational legitimation, as the mandate-holders could also rely on other legitimation practices. Moreover, the Special Procedures have to take care that their perception as independent experts is not compromised,Footnote 101 and they have overlapping mandates with the human rights treaty bodies and the HRC’s Universal Periodic Review, which is why we could also expect them to legitimate themselves through dissociation from rather than association with others.
Among the 60 Special Procedures that had been established as of November 2023, I selected (a) the Special Rapporteur (SR) on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures (UCM) on the enjoyment of human rights and (b) the Independent Expert (IE) on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). These two were chosen because they have particularly contentious mandates and are backed by different state alliances.Footnote 102 The SR on UCM is backed by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), while it is opposed by most members of the UN’s Western European and Others Group (WEOG).Footnote 103 The IE on SOGI, by contrast, is backed by European and Latin American countries and the United States (US) (and some Asian and African countries) but is opposed by members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a significant number of African states, and China and Russia.Footnote 104 Special Procedures with contested mandates in particular need to engage in self-legitimation.Footnote 105 The case selection, therefore, once again enables me to observe relational legitimation (if it occurs) and helps me avoid potential bias by centring on Special Procedures with different ideological leanings. There have been two mandate-holders in each case up to November 2023, namely Idriss Jazairy (May 2015–December 2019) and Alena Douhan (since March 2020) as SR on UCM and Vitit Muntarbhorn (August 2016–October 2017) and Victor Madrigal-Borloz (January 2018–October 2023) as IE on SOGI.Footnote 106
Data and method
For data, I have selected the annual thematic reports that the Special Procedures have to submit to the HRC. For the SR on UCM, I consider all nine of the thematic reports that have been published from the creation of the mandate in 2015 until 2023; for the IE on SOGI all seven thematic reports published between 2017, when the mandate was created, and 2023 (for an overview of the data, see section 1 of the appendix). The reports cover specific themes related to the mandate and the activities undertaken during the reporting period. Each report is roughly 20 pages long. The reports are, together with country reports and communications, the key publications produced by the Special Procedures;Footnote 107 their audience is not confined to states but also includes civil society actors, academia, other (UN) institutions, and any other constituents and observers.Footnote 108 As the reports are very similar in structure and content, they can be used both for a longitudinal analysis of relational legitimation practices and for a comparison between the practices of the two Special Procedures. In addition, I conducted an interview with one mandate-holder, to be able to contextualise the findings from the document analysis.Footnote 109
I have employed manual qualitative content analysisFootnote 110 to do justice to the richness of the empirical material. I developed categories for relational legitimation frames and categories for reference objects. The coding unit is a statement building a relation with a reference object that uses a specific frame. Each code consists of a combination of a frame category and a reference object category. Every text passage that is coded may receive one or several codes. However, I treat every paragraph of the reports as a sense unit. This implies that I count every combination of a frame category and a reference object category (e.g. ‘alignment’ + ‘civil society’) only once in each paragraph, which means that I might underestimate rather than overestimate the extent of relational legitimation. A codebook with further coding rules and anchor examples can be found in section 2 of the appendix.
As discussed above, I distinguish between three types of relational legitimation frames and have therefore developed three categories: ‘authorisation’, ‘alignment’, and ‘cooperation’. For authorisation, I code statements that underscore that the Special Procedures have been given a mandate by relevant others or that relevant others welcome their appointment. Alignment covers statements that signal that the Special Procedures share the values and positions of relevant others, value their mandate-related behaviour, see themselves as allies who fight for a common cause, or trust the information they provide. Cooperation relates to statements that report that relevant others work together with or consult the Special Procedures or that announce that the Special Procedures plan to work with or consult relevant others for the fulfilment of their mandate.
As for the reference objects, I have developed the following categories: ‘international courts’, ‘IOs’, ‘UN’, ‘states’, ‘civil society’, ‘academia’, ‘media’, and ‘business’. To explore whether Western epistemic authorities (‘civil society’ and ‘academia’) are in fact being addressed most often, I focus on a subset of all coded reports, namely those of 2017 and 2022 by both Special Procedures, while considering all the epistemic authorities with which relations are built in each paragraph.Footnote 111
I do not claim that legitimation is the only purpose behind making statements that build positive relations with reference objects, which needs to be taken into consideration when interpreting the findings. It seems plausible, for instance, that there is an element of ritual in statements that invoke authorisation by the HRC and that mentioning actors and institutions that have cooperated with the mandate-holder also has the function of providing information. As it is generally challenging to ascertain the motivation behind public statements, there is always a risk of over-inclusiveness, especially when considering not only explicit but also implicit rhetoric. Ignoring implicit rhetoric is not an option, however, because heuristic thinking can be triggered by explicit justifications and by implicit statements that convey the impression that an institution is related to relevant others in positive ways. Even so, I assume that statements that build relations with relevant others cannot be reduced to mere ritual or information provision. Theoretically, relation-building is assumed to have a self-legitimating dimension. Empirically, mandate-holders have a certain leeway when writing their reports, do not have to follow a standardised template, and know that they need to legitimate themselves. Finally, rhetoric that builds positive relations with relevant others can still influence the legitimacy beliefs of targeted or self-appointed audiences, even if its (primary) purpose is not legitimation.Footnote 112
Lastly, to rule out legitimation by association being overshadowed by legitimation by differentiation, I search for instances of the latter in each report. Specifically, I look for statements in which the Special Procedures signal that they are better equipped than other actors and institutions to carry out the task assigned to them.
Exploring generalisability
Eventually, I explore how far the findings may be generalisable beyond the Special Procedures. I briefly discuss expectations regarding the conditions under which international institutions should engage in relational legitimation and those under which the findings on frames and reference objects may be transferable beyond the selected case. I also code three similar reports from different contexts – one from the IE on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism,Footnote 113 one from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF),Footnote 114 and one from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)’s Representative on Freedom of the Media.Footnote 115 The purpose of coding additional reports from other institutions is not to test the expectations but to explore their plausibility.
Results
Scope
Relational legitimation practices occur frequently in the two Special Procedures’ annual thematic reports to the HRC. Overall, 1,840 codes that capture instances of relational legitimation appeared in the 16 reports chosen for analysis. Every document page suitable for analysis (299 pages altogether) contained 6.2 codes on average. This finding remained remarkably stable for the two Special Procedures: The reports from the SR on UCM yielded on average 5.9 codes per page (924 codes on 156 pages); the reports from the IE on SOGI on average 6.4 codes per page (916 codes on 143 pages) (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Scope.
The finding that relational legitimation is a common feature in the selected reports also holds over time, with values ranging from 3.8 codes per page in 2015 to 8.0 codes per page in 2023, and it applies to both Special Procedures. There is a slight increase in the number of coded text passages over time (see Figure 2). This is not in line with the expectation that relation-building is particularly important for new institutions.Footnote 116 Yet the slight increase might be due to differences among individual mandate-holders, the time needed to develop relational legitimation practices, and a rise in the number of actors that the mandate-holders actually worked together with. There might also be a decrease in the coming years, given that the mandates are still fairly young.
Figure 2. Scope over time.
These findings suggest that relational legitimation is a relevant phenomenon. This does not imply that legitimation practices that rely on normative justifications are irrelevant. In fact, the reports also include statements in which the Special Procedures point to the social purpose of their task, the fair procedures that their work is based on, and their achievements. Nonetheless, the findings from the analysis suggest that relational legitimation is an important legitimation practice alongside others.
Frames
There is a clear pattern in terms of which relational legitimation frames are used. Alignment is the dominant frame: It received 63.3% – and therefore a little less than two-thirds – of all codes (1,164 out of 1,840). Cooperation received slightly more than one third of all codes, namely 34.6% (638). The remaining codes were assigned to authorisation (2.1% or 38). This pattern was again highly stable for both Special Rapporteurs. In the reports of the SR on UCM, 64.1% of all codes were assigned to alignment (592 out of 924), 33.4% to cooperation (309), and 2.5% to authorisation (23). In those of the IE on SOGI, 62.5% of all codes were attributed to alignment (572 out of 916), 35.9% to cooperation (329), and 1.6% to authorisation (15). Again, this pattern remained stable over time: in every year, alignment codings clearly outnumbered those for cooperation and especially authorisation. Values for alignment ranged from 56.6% (2023) to 83.2% (2016), values for cooperation from 14.8% (2016) to 43.1% (2023), and values for authorisation from 0.3% (2023) to 8.3% (2015). Figures 3 and 4 summarise these findings; the subsequent paragraphs contextualise the findings and provide examples.
Figure 3. Frames.
Figure 4. Frames over time.
Alignment is the dominant relational legitimation frame, probably because it is the most malleable and hence convenient frame, not requiring an actual (authorisation or cooperation) relationship that needs to exist to be reported on. The Special Procedures portray themselves as similar to relevant others by highlighting the fact that they hold the same positions or work for the same cause. For instance, the IE on SOGI makes clear that his positions are in line with those of other UN Special Procedures.Footnote 117 Agreement with positions held by other UN bodies is also pointed out, as the following comment by the IE on SOGI on standards for the collection and management of data on SOGI rights shows: ‘The mandate concurs with UNDPFootnote 118 that related standards should develop first as self-enforced standards and later as mandatory international standards.’Footnote 119 Both Special Procedures also associate themselves with the positions and actions of individual states. The SR on UCM, for example, mentions that he ‘wishes to reiterate his appreciation to the authorities of the United States’ for having annulled sanctions that had brought harm to individuals.Footnote 120 Finally, both experts include references to scientific publications, in that way connecting themselves to scientific authorities. The SR on UCM, for instance, routinely cites scientific publications that document the negative effects of unilateral sanctions on the enjoyment of human rights.Footnote 121 Alignment also occurs in more implicit ways. For instance, the Special Procedures may, when giving advice to states, highlight the importance of other actors, whether specific actors or an entire actor category, and stress that they would value their contribution. The IE on SOGI, for example, emphasises that he appreciates the contributions of non-state actors, underlining that he ‘recommends that States create and uphold an enabling environment for civil society organizing for the rights of trans, non-binary and gender-nonconforming persons, and respect and protect their right to freedom of assembly and association’.Footnote 122
Reporting cooperation with other actors or institutions is another relevant relational legitimation practice, although it occurs less frequently. The Special Procedures report that states have invited them for visits as part of their mandate,Footnote 123 suggesting that those inviting them recognise them as legitimate experts – especially given that states are under no obligation to receive them.Footnote 124 Similarly, the Special Procedures mention that other actors and institutions cooperate with them by submitting information, with the IE on SOGI, for example, reporting on the response to a call for submissions from various actors.Footnote 125 The experts also highlight that they work together with others in their efforts to improve states’ compliance with human rights standards. The IE on SOGI, for example, mentions that ‘along with nine other special procedures, he voiced concern to the Ghanaian authorities at draft legislation criminalizing a sweeping range of so-called “LGBTQI activities”’.Footnote 126 Furthermore, the Special Procedures highlight that they are regularly invited to attend workshops and conferences, again indicating that they are recognised by those who want them at the events.Footnote 127 Finally, the Special Procedures point to informal consultations with an array of different actors.Footnote 128
The Special Procedures rarely highlight that they are formally or informally authorised by higher-level UN bodies or UN member states. This is contrary to expectations to a certain extent. It seems that the Special Procedures see more value in portraying themselves as being aligned with others ‘on equal footing’, rather than highlighting that they owe their existence to some superior entity or the consent of states. However, if the authorisation frame is used, it is used early on in the reports so that any such statements are prominently placed.Footnote 129 The Special Procedures do indeed regularly mention that they have been appointed by the HRC,Footnote 130 signalling that ‘all mandates are created equal’, irrespective of the number of votes in favour they receive in the Council.Footnote 131 They also typically add that they are discharging their mandate ‘in accordance with’ HRC resolutions.Footnote 132 Referring to another key UN institution, the SR on UCM also mentions that the General Assembly ‘requested him’ to add specific information to his report to the Assembly.Footnote 133 Moreover, the following statement by the IE on SOGI indicates that he wants his readers to recall that his authority ultimately derives from the consent of UN member states: ‘The Independent Expert has accepted to be the custodian of a mandate stemming from the vision of States committed to eradicating violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.’Footnote 134 Finally, there are also instances of the Special Procedures highlighting informal forms of authorisation, with the SR on UCM mentioning a ‘letter of welcome from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’.Footnote 135
Reference objects
Which actors and institutions do the Special Procedures associate themselves with? Overall, we can see that relations are established with different kinds of actors and institutions, but that, as expected, relations with epistemic authorities and other UN bodies stand out. In total, 65.5% (1,205) of all codings apply to epistemic authorities and UN entities, with epistemic authorities (civil societyFootnote 136 and academiaFootnote 137) accounting for 35.4% (652) and the UN for 30.1% (553).Footnote 138 This finding holds for both Special Procedures: for the SR on UCM, 62.1% of all codes apply to epistemic authorities or UN entities, and for the IE on SOGI 69.9%.Footnote 139 It also holds over time, as epistemic authorities and UN entities together account for at least 55.4% of all codes (2,016) in every year, with the highest share being 73.4% in 2017. Figures 5 and 6 summarise these findings, and the subsequent paragraphs give examples and interpret them.
Figure 5. Reference objects.
Figure 6. Reference objects over time.
As expected, the Special Procedures are particularly likely to engage in self-legitimation by highlighting relations with epistemic authorities. We see ample use of alignment with civil society, as when the IE on SOGI asserts that ‘progressive Islamic organizations such as the Al-Fatiha Foundation similarly argue that laws criminalizing homosexuality are incompatible with the values of peace and tolerance adopted by the Prophet Muhammad’.Footnote 140 Cooperation with civil society actors is also reported, for example, when the IE on SOGI recalls that he ‘attended and presented a keynote speech at the fourth regional conference organized by Pan Africa ILGA.Footnote 141, Footnote 142 We likewise see frequent alignments with academic authorities, as exemplified by the SR on UCM announcing that he will engage with reform processes such as the Interlaken Process and the Bonn/Berlin Process, in which academic institutions were heavily involved.Footnote 143 That actors and institutions legitimate themselves by building relations with epistemic authorities supports findings from existing research on the European Union (EU), according to which civil society actors ‘supply the Union with popular legitimacy “from below”’.Footnote 144 Similarly, it has been said of the European Commission that ‘political organizations are likely to use expert knowledge to signal their legitimacy’ and are ‘keen to make its use of knowledge explicit to actors in its environment’.Footnote 145
The expectation that epistemic authorities from the West are particularly attractive reference objects is by and large confirmed using a subset of reports of 2017 and 2022 (see Table 1). Their dominance is particularly obvious when it comes to alignment with academics or academic institutions. In fact, in 94.3% (66 out of 70) of all statements in which the mandate-holders align themselves with academics or academic institutions, they align themselves with Western ones. If we consider the SR on UCM alone, the proportion rises to 100%, as all 46 academic alignment references are Western-directed. The complete absence of alignment with non-Western academics or academic institutions is all the more interesting if we recall that no WEOG member or observer voted for the SR’s mandate. It is also to some extent surprising if we consider that references to non-Western sources could be a means to bolster the standing and enhance the visibility of such sourcesFootnote 146 and could resonate with audiences who reject Western sources categorically. Alignment with civil society actors is disproportionately Western-oriented, too, but the share is on the whole lower (44.3% or 27 out of 61). But in reports on cooperation with civil society actors, the picture is different: only 16.7% (6 out of 36) of them are from the West, probably because the issues covered resonate with civil society actors from non-Western contexts and because non-Western civil society actors have opportunities to offer themselves as cooperation partners and gatekeeping dynamics are less pronounced.Footnote 147 These findings raise important normative questions regarding dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in global governance. Relational legitimation may have an integrative function, especially if different actors and institutions regard relations to the same reference objects as sources of legitimacy. This function may be undermined, however, by an overrepresentation of Western epistemic authorities among reference objects that hides non-Western sources of knowledge.
Table 1. Share of references to Western epistemic authorities (in subset of reports of 2017 and 2022).
Besides building relations with epistemic authorities, another widespread legitimation practice used by the Special Procedures is to associate themselves with the UN as a whole or with specific UN bodies.Footnote 148 As mentioned above, the Special Procedures prominently remind their readers that they are authorised by the HRC. Highlighting alignment and cooperation with UN bodies is common, too. As mentioned earlier, the Special Procedures frequently portray themselves as sharing the positions of other Special Procedures or other reputable UN bodies.Footnote 149 They also frequently stress the value of cooperating with other UN entities when discharging their mandate.Footnote 150 Such highlighting of one’s belonging to a family as a legitimation practice has already been observed when it comes to other UN institutions such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Refugee Organization.Footnote 151 Obviously, the Special Procedures consider it beneficial to portray themselves as being embedded in a community of UN institutions and endorsed by them,Footnote 152 especially in light of their being rather young entities with contested mandates. In addition, the comparatively high share of statements building relations with UN entities might also be due to the fact that UN entities are global entities and might thus be recognised as legitimate authorities by both actors supporting and those disapproving of the specific mandate.
Legitimation by differentiation
Legitimation by association is not overshadowed by legitimation by differentiation. The Special Procedures, as part of their mandate, obviously distance themselves from the behaviour of states that, in their assessment, commit human rights violations. However, although the Special Procedures have overlapping mandates with the human rights treaty bodies and the HRC’s Universal Periodic Review, among others, I found in the entire corpus only three instances in which the mandate-holders point to the comparative advantages of their approaches compared to those of other relevant international bodies.Footnote 153 It seems that for small institutions like the Special Procedures, which need good working relationships with others, it is considered more beneficial to stress similarities and cooperative relations rather than uniqueness and competitive advantage. This ties in with the finding that ‘when rapporteurs stake out differences from official UN policy, they may find that UN staff members distance themselves from them as a result’.Footnote 154 It also resonates with the assumption that, owing to resource shortages, the Special Procedures need to cultivate good relations with all actors and institutions that may affect the implementation of their mandate.Footnote 155
Exploring generalisability
It is obviously difficult to generalise from a single case or a limited number of cases. Nonetheless, we can direct our attention to the conditions under which relational legitimation would be particularly useful for international institutions and probe whether particular findings from the selected cases would or would not travel to other institutions.
As regards scope, it is assumed that legitimation by association is particularly important for international institutions that lack standing.Footnote 156 This would imply that relational legitimation is less important for institutions with less contested mandates and those whose authority in a specific field is generally recognised. The findings from my coding of additional reports confirm this assumption. Relational legitimation can, for instance, be observed in the report by UNICEF, the lead organisation on children’s rights, and the report by the IE on albinism, a comparatively uncontroversial Special Procedures mandate, but in both instances it can be observed less often, also suggesting that referring to relevant others is not merely routine.Footnote 157
As for the findings on frames, it seems plausible that, being generally the most malleable and convenient frame of the three, alignment would be used most often in other cases. My additional codings support this expectation, as in all additionally coded reports alignment predominates too. It is even more dominant in the UNICEF report and that of the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media. It seems as if international institutions that are less dependent on cooperation with others use the cooperation frames less. It may also be that older and more established institutions see less value in highlighting that they have been authorised by other prestigious institutions.
Some of the findings on the actors and institutions with which relations are built should hold beyond the case of the Special Procedures, while others may be confined to institutions that are embedded in a dense web of family relations. In light of their inherent qualities, it seems plausible that epistemic authorities are attractive reference objects for a wide range of international institutions. However, building relations with members of the same institutional family may be a common practice only among institutions that belong to families with many (prestigious) members. Both expectations are supported by the additionally coded reports: I found numerous references to epistemic authorities in them, but only in the reports of UN institutions were references to family members present in sizable numbers.
Conclusion
This article has shown that relational legitimation is a meaningful legitimation practice adopted by the UN Special Procedures. Not only is it a fairly widespread practice used by both the SR on UCM and the IE on SOGI, but its common use can also be observed in every thematic report submitted to the HRC between the authorisation of the two mandates and 2023. There are also discernible patterns. While all relational legitimation frames are used, alignment is consistently used most often. Furthermore, whereas relations are built with different reference objects, relations with epistemic authorities (especially those from the West) and other members of the UN family stand out. The article has also explored the conditions under which the findings may travel beyond the case chosen for analysis.
The article contributes to the two strands of research from which the concept of relational legitimation is built, that is, research on the legitimation of international institutions and research on relationalism. It conceptualises and empirically substantiates a legitimation practice that has, up to now, been overshadowed by the well-known triad of legitimation narratives that focus on an institution’s social purpose, procedures, and performance. It adds to the literature on relationalism by zooming in on relation-building’s use for legitimation purposes and providing empirical research to a field that has so far remained largely theoretical and conceptual. Specifically, by focusing on international institutions’ relation-building practices, the article offers another perspective on the relational dimension of their legitimation practices that complements accounts that concentrate on the link between the institutions and their audiences. This is not only important in itself, but it also benefits research into the origins and consequences of the institutions’ legitimation practices by shedding light on one that is often neglected. Finally, the article’s findings are of practical relevance. Understanding how international institutions build relationships with relevant others not only provides insights into how international institutions legitimate themselves, but also reveals which actors and institutions are considered legitimate – those with whom building relationships is considered useful in an increasingly contested global order.
The article’s analysis and findings open up several promising avenues for future research. First, the conditions under which relational legitimation is likely to occur and those under which findings are generalisable beyond the UN Special Procedures should be further studied. Second, it might be worthwhile exploring how relational legitimation interacts with other legitimation practices. Specifically, future research should look systematically into the conditions under which international institutions turn to association or dissociation for the purpose of legitimation, and how these two practices might interact. Third, the article theoretically assumes, but does not show empirically, that relational legitimation practices resonate with relevant audiences and alter or affirm their legitimacy beliefs vis-à-vis international institutions. Survey experiments could be used to investigate the effects of relational legitimation and to ascertain how relation-building is perceived by the audiences in question.
Supplementary material
The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210525100958.
Acknowledgements
For helpful comments on previous drafts I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of Review of International Studies as well as Klaus Dingwerth, Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt, Sebastian Haug, Marlene Joger, Nele Kortendiek, Matthias Kranke, and Christian Kreuder-Sonnen. Financial support by the German Research Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.
Video Abstract
To view the online video abstract, please visit: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210525100958.
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