ABSTRACTThis article addresses the identity of the legitimate actors of international law-making from the perspective of democratic theory. It argues that both states or state-based international organisations, and civil society actors should be considered complementary legitimate actors of international law-making. Unlike previous accounts, our proposed model of representation, the Multiple Representation Model, is based on an expanded, democratic understanding of the principle of state participation: it is specifically designed to palliate the democratic deficits of more common versions of the Principle (...) of State Consent. Second, it endorses a qualified version of the Principle of Civil Society Participation, one that is much more restrictive and more critical of the democratic defects of civil society actors than most of its current supporters. Finally, it reveals how the democratic strengths and deficits of both models are best approached as mirroring one another and need to be combined in a complex ac... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Peter Hägel's Billionaires in World Politics undoubtedly fills a gap in the literature of international relations and global governance. My comment seeks to highlight that Hägel's (2020. Billionaires in World Politics. 1st ed. Oxford Scholarship Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press) work allows us to advance our understanding of how these private actors can be understood as legitimate authorities and how they can contribute to the legitimacy of the international order. I divide my commentary into three points: the first concerns (...) the approach to billionaires from their individual agency (the individual approach), the second relates to the separation between the state and the global levels (the division approach), and the third presents questions on political legitimacy that arise from his case studies (the legitimacy question). (shrink)