Legitimacy in an Age of Global Politics

Book excerpt: In spite of the conspicuous lack of normatively plausible alternatives to liberal democracy, it is now widely held that the age of globalization has ushered in serious challenges to the democratic legitimacy of the nation state. This alleged crisis of the western nation state seems to be compounded by the legitimacy deficits of newly emerging governance structures at the international and supranational level. The contributors to this book explore the frontiers of normative and empirical legitimacy research, whilst drawing upon a range of pertinent conceptual and methodological issues.