ABSTRACT
The successful provision of global public goods in the 21st century rests on two complementary tasks. First, increasing the involvement of non-state actors in global governance, because governments will find it increasingly difficult to act alone in designing and implementing effective regimes. Second, ensuring that non-state involvement is structured to avoid the dangers of special-interest politics, because otherwise decisions may favour one group over another or lead to gridlock in the system. The chapter shows how these two tasks can be addressed in tandem, a challenge that raises fundamental questions of political theory and democratic practice that take the debate on global public goods into largely uncharted territory. It focuses on the challenges of legitimacy for non-state actors in the international system. The chapter deals with businesses and civil-society organisations, and focuses on corporations and non-governmental organisations within these general categories. Transnational civil society is far from democratic, and few non-state networks have democratic systems of governance and accountability.
