Quality, legitimacy and global governance : a comparative analysis of four forest institutions

This dissertation is a theoretical and evaluative study of the quality of global governance, explored through case studies of four global institutions in the environmental policy domain addressing forest management: the Forest Stewardship Council, the ISO 14000 Series (Environmental Management Systems), the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, and the United Nations Forum on Forests. It examines the international relations/international politics and comparative politics/public administration literature concerning the institutional theory and practice of contemporary governance, particularly the nature of democracy beyond the nation-state. Given the ongoing evolution of global governance, it is important to determine whether the institutions in which actors operate are sufficiently effective to address the problems of the contemporary era. Previous methods of evaluating governance quality have been based largely upon input/output legitimacy. Using a theoretical framework based around 'new' governance, the thesis argues that contemporary global governance is best understood as being built around 'participation as structure' and 'deliberation as process', and that the more deliberative the interactions within a given institution, the higher the quality of governance. The method of analysis is built upon a new arrangement of the accepted attributes of 'good' governance, using a set of qualitative principles, criteria and indicators, and applied to the structures and processes of governance. Recognising that contemporary global institutions are manifold, the analytical framework also locates the institutions typologically, determined by their source of authority (state/non-state), democratic mode (aggregative/deliberative) and degree of governance innovation (old/new). The research findings confirm that the more deliberative the model of democratic interaction, the better the systems' quality of governance and by extension, the more legitimate the institution.