CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Do, Hong |
|---|---|
| Title | Global Public Reason and Participatory Global Governance: Towards a Model of Transnational Deliberative Innovations |
| Summary | The aim of this dissertation is to develop a normative account of international legitimacy that explains how international institutions can justifiably exercise authority over underrepresented individuals. While much scholarship has focused on grounding international legitimacy in state consent, functional effectiveness, or procedural fairness among states, far less attention has been paid to the justificatory demands that arise when international institutions exercise authority directly over individuals, particularly those living under non-democratic regimes who lack meaningful domestic avenues for political participation. To address this challenge, the dissertation advances a participatory account of international legitimacy. First, it clarifies the nature of international authority and legitimacy beyond state-centered frameworks. Second, the dissertation develops a normative framework that reconciles procedural legitimacy with substantive justice through an account of Global Public Reason accommodating the multifaceted character of transnational disagreements. Third, it argues that international legitimacy requires institutions to offer individual-responsive justification to those whose normative situations they alter, rather than relying solely on state-based mediation. Fourth, the dissertation demonstrates that enhancing international legitimacy requires institutions to offer adequate opportunities for political participation to individuals in non-democratic states who lack domestic avenues of inclusion. Finally, it specifies what adequate opportunities for political participation require in the international context: the random distribution of participatory opportunities, the institutionalization of deliberation through Global Public Reason, and the conferral of meaningful, though limited, political authority within international decision-making processes. This dissertation makes two original contributions to debates on international legitimacy. First, it challenges the prevailing assumption that political participation is an exclusively domestic entitlement, owed only by one’s own state. It argues instead that international institutions themselves incur duties of political inclusion when they exercise authority over individuals This gives rise to a distinct and previously under-theorized justificatory requirement to provide institutionalized spaces of political participation for individuals living under non-democratic regimes, one that neither replaces non-democratic system nor presupposes domestic democratization. Second, the dissertation advances a novel account of how such political participation can be institutionalized at the global level. It demonstrates how international legitimacy can be strengthened through concrete participatory mechanisms that are normatively demanding yet politically feasible. Taken together, these contributions reorient international political theory away from state-centered models of legitimacy and toward an individual-centered, participation-sensitive account of international legitimacy. |
| Supervisor | Andres Moles |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/do_hong.pdf |
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