As some thinkers have sought in the concept of global civil society an ethically driven site of deliberation and even resistance, so others have criticized global civil society for its lack of legitimacy and representativeness. This article attempts to answer these criticisms ? at least in part ? by invoking a moral commitment to the value of justification. I argue that the idea of justification, when examined, offers us a particular understanding of legitimacy which would be attainable for global civil (...) society actors. The article begins by setting out the case for concern about the legitimacy of global civil society. I then outline a certain understanding of justification, showing how a commitment to this conception provides both a response to critics of global civil society and an ethical baseline for humane actors within global civil society. I move on to trace the significance of the moral relevance of justification for actors' strategies. Lastly, however, I highlight the difficulty of justification in a diverse world. This is to say that the issues of legitimacy and strategy facing global civil society are only made more tractable, not dissolved, by an appeal to the importance of justification. (shrink)

This article argues that the standard model of political representation mischaracterises the structure of representation. After surveying the classical types of representation and their application to non-humans, the basic nature of representation is shown to have been unduly centred on interests, responsiveness and unidirectional protocols. It proposes a different structure by drawing inspiration from recent scholarship and developments in political philosophy, as well as the representation of non-human actors. It proposes an ontological grounding of representation in ‘irreducible multiplicity’, and a (...) structural analysis based on the concepts of claim and relation. This abstract form of representation can take into account both human and non-human cases, and works to ground different typologies. The relational structure of representation creates interests and preferences, subjects and actors, power dynamics and seemingly immutable identities. (shrink)