This article develops theoretical insights concerning the legitimacy of non-profit Transnational Non-Governmental Organisations (TNGOs) in global governance. The research compares the advocacy initiatives of Transparency International (TI), the leading TNGO in the international regime of anti-corruption, in Germany and France during the 1990s. The main argument is that the legitimacy of TNGOs is a relational concept: it is granted or denied in a relationship between at least two parties, in which actor attributes play a role but are not decisive. Only such a relational conception can explain why a given TNGO is granted legitimacy in one context and denied it in another. In addition, legitimacy matters. Although insufficient on its own, legitimacy is a necessary condition for effective advocacy, which TNGOs can generate endogenously. To the extent that the legitimacy of TNGOs depends on their acceptance by dominant groups and powerful decision-makers, therefore, ‘legitimate’ TNGOs may function to sustain rather than challenge the structures of power which condition global outcomes in ways that are often contrary to the goals of equality, fairness, and justice. Thus to assess the impact of TNGOs in global governance, one must examine which TNGOs have been granted (or denied) legitimacy and influence, and why.

In recent years, the post-neoliberal bloc of Latin America countries, ALBA, has fashioned a role for itself in international climate change negotiations as representing the voice of ‘the people’. In this article I draw on innovative theorising of representation to critically examine this claim. I argue that although ALBA has sought to construct a constituency based on the malleable notion of ‘the people’, its function is better understood as ‘discursive representation’, and specifically as representation of Green Radical discourses. Such forms of representation are potentially important in global governance given the challenges of capturing the interests of all affected parties. I critically evaluate this case of discursive representation in terms of its rhetorical efficacy; accountability; consistency; and legitimacy. Although certain favourable elements emerge from this evaluation, this case also points to the hazards of transmitting a public discourse through a state-based representative in multilateral settings.

Comparisons of peacebuilding with historic practices of imperialism are common, but these comparisons have sustained a hegemonic antagonism between humanitarian and imperialist interpretations of international peace intervention. This article argues that this common framing externalises the problem of intervention, romanticises local resistance, and forecloses to investigation the articulation between militarised peace practices and transnational capitalist relations. To do so, the article analyses the case of Francophone Africa, thus providing a context that has been left unexplored in peacebuilding debates. By bringing back in the historicity of particular Franco-African imperial experiences into peacebuilding research, the article reveals the militarisation of politics, transnational elite networks, and the dominant intellectual predispositions that work to reproduce the legitimacy of hegemonic practices of ‘peace’ interventionism. In the last section, the article analyses the debates over the UN-French 2011 intervention in Côte d'Ivoire to reveal the connections between the ethics of humanitarian interventions and the political economy of imperialism. The article concludes that the imperial legacy of peacebuilding is found in old capabilities, new organising logics, and specific practices and power relations and that to focus on the humanitarian-imperialist antagonism caricatures the relationships between ‘local’ and ‘international’ actors.