Ph.D. Jan Aart Scholte gave a presentation at the IMEMO

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On October 12, Jan Aart Scholte (Netherlands), Ph.D., Professor of the School of Global Studies at the University of Göteborg University, gave a presentation at the IMEMO.
Professor Scholte has extensive experience of research and teaching in the field of globalization and global governance. He is the author of many publications in the journals devoted to world politics as well as the author and editor (and co-editor) of a number of works. In the Scopus system, more than 1,000 references were made to the work of professor Scholte (his Hirsch index is 13).
 
  
 
The presentation of professor Scholte was entitled «Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes and Consequences». First of all he pointed out the difficulties in defining what we mean by “global governance”: it could be rules and regulatory processes in respect of transplanetary relations, intergovernmental organizations (UN), transgovernmental networks (G20), private international institutions or multistakeholder arrangements (ICANN).
This topic makes us wonder of what the legitimacy of such organizations is based on, what makes citizens and elites accept global governance institutions. Here the lecturer identified three groups of sources. First – individual reasons. It could be subjective perception of international organizations by a person, based on his knowledge of them, by feelings of social trust, by his identity or by his reception of political communications. Second group of sources is institutional one. It is personal trust to the official purposes of international institutions (UN agenda), to the modes of operation within the organization (decision making) or to the results of its work. Particular features of organizational interior are also important: democracy inside the organization, fairness of its reports, technocracy in decisions making etc. Third group of reasons is structural, when the personal trust towards the organization is based on the norms of behavior in the society, on his attitude towards capitalism etc.
 
 
Further, the lecturer turned to the question of how and with what success are global governance institutions legitimized (or delegitimized) by their supporters and opponents. Here he distinguished four types of (de)legitimization process: material resources; discourses (use of language and narratives like “democracy”, “market”, “security”, “development” etc.); institutional practices (organizational apparatuses of governance, voting practices etc.); behavior and rituals (membership in the organization, attending meetings, paying dues, speeches, ratings, polls, street protests etc.). At the end of his speech, the author focused on questions about when and how does legitimacy matter for global governance institutions.
The presentation of professor Scholte was followed by discussion where participated corresponding member of RAS, deputy director for scientific work Alexey Kuznetsov; senior researcher Pavel Timofeev; research fellow Alexandra Borisova, senior researcher Tatiyana Andreeva and the others. The discussants debated the influence of national governments and international organizations on world processes, the degree of Western influence on contemporary world, the role of the Internet in globalization.
 
The Council of Young Scientists of IMEMO is grateful to everyone who participated in the meeting.
 

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