Legitimate Consent? Delegating Sovereignty on Rule of Law Roles in Weak States

• In Event: Causes and Consequences of Legitimacy in Areas of Limited Statehood

Abstract

Efforts to strengthen or restore the rule of law in badly governed states sometimes substitute external authority structures—organizations, institutions, laws, practices, or personnel—for internal structures. These foreign intervention can enter by domestic invitation. Recently, the Malian government asked international actors to send troops to help stabilize and strengthen its rule of law, for example. Drawing on the international courts and tribunals literature, as well as across the peacekeeping and peacebuilding cases, this paper assesses whose consent is given in these delegation cases, and what that means for the resulting legitimacy and effectiveness. Establishing legitimacy is a fundamental challenge for activities involving delegation. Consent may ease this process. But that may depend on the part of the population offering such consent. Tracing cases and compiling comparisons from the cases explored in these literatures on international courts and tribunals and on peacekeeping and peacebuilding, this paper explores these dynamics.

Authors

• Aila M. Matanock, University of California-Berkeley

• Melissa Anne Carlson, University of California, Berkeley

• Allison Namias Grossman