Exercising Public Authority Beyond the State: Transnational Democracy and/or Alternative Legitimation Strategies?

Abstract

legitimacy of the rule of kings and princes in the medieval feudal order had a different meaning from the legitimacy of kings or princes after the emergence of the modern territorial state; and even greater changes occurred in the postFrench Revolution era and the late nineteenth century under the impact of legal positivism, when metajuridical foundations of the legitimacy of public authority became no longer acceptable. 3 In our time, dealing with the problem of the legitimacy of public authority has become additionally complicated because under the impact of globalization—understood as a process of denationalization—public authority is no longer exclusively exercised within clearly defined territorial entities, i.e. within the sovereign states. Rather, the “production of public goods” or the performance of hitherto genuinely state