In this project we investigate the emergence and anatomy of the justification narrative of good functional governance. This narrative may count, at least in the realm of international politics, as the most important alternative to strategies of discursive legitimation that centre on democratic procedure and control. In fact, in the current debate over the democratic deficit of international governance some authors claim that international governance can be legitimated without recurrence to parliamentary control, direct citizen involvement, or enhanced accountability of the executive. In particular Giandomenico Majone and Andrew Moravscik promote a functional, output-oriented legitimation of international organizations and the European Union. These institutions are portrayed as technical agencies, equipped by their national principals with a limited mandate of rule-making and implementation. Their independence from everyday politics and their technocratic character are usually regarded as an advantage, rather than a defect. In this view, any further “democratization” or “politicization” of these organizations would be inappropriate and even hazardous because it would expose them to political dynamics and distributive conflict that they are unable to deal with.
The aim of this project is to explore the justificatory narrative of good functional governance in historical perspective. So far, we know very little about its origins and the authors that were influential in its construction. We are planning to trace the history of academic and political literature that was intended to legitimate proposals of international governance to their contemporaries. Our research will unfold in three stages: in a first step, we will analyse the emergence and consolidation of the narrative in the first half of the 20th century; in a second step we will analyse its argumentative building blocks; and in a third step we will relate our insights to the current debate over global governance and strategies of democratization. At the core of this project, therefore, is not just a historiography of ideas of good governance and the functionalist variant of internationalism. Rather, we aim at a more profound and systematic analysis of the central elements of a functional justification of governance which may prove to have been quite robust over time. In this respect we identified a preliminary list of five key themes that seem to be recurring in the functionalist literature on international organisation:
1) Societal modernization and rationalization
2) International interdependence and the need for cooperation
3) Scientific expertise and specialised bureaucracies
4) Due process and the rule of law
5) De-politicization of international cooperation
