ABSTRACT
Persons and groups affected by the choices and actions of international institutions increasingly claim to have a say in their making. They challenge governments, international bureaucrats, and classic NGOs for lacking legitimacy and acting in ways that disregard too many people’s legitimate concerns. To study these recent developments, this collection brings together political science and international law scholars. Based on their observations, the introduction makes three major contributions: First, it conceptualises the rising involvement of affected persons’ organisations (APOs) in global governance as a turn to affectedness-participation. As the contributions to this collection demonstrate, affected persons and groups by now participate in many areas of global rule- and law-making. Second, the introduction shows that their participation addresses current legitimacy problems of international public policy making and transnational (self-)governance. APOs often make innovative policy demands, articulate marginalised normative understandings and call for radical political change. However, third, this introduction also finds that pitfalls remain: conceptualising and identifying affected persons and their legitimate representatives is difficult, APOs often face serious capacity constraints and powerful international actors threaten to co-opt the newcomers. Nevertheless, the greater involvement of affected persons is a promising development in the journey towards more inclusive and legitimate global politics.
