1 Higgott, Richard, Underhill, Geoffrey R. D. and Bieler, Andreas (eds), Non-State Actors and authority in the Global System (London: Routledge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Josselin, Daphne and Wallace, William (eds), Non-State Actors in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Graz, Jean-Christophe and Nölke, Andreas (eds), Transnational Private Governance and Its Limits (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar .

2 Cutler, Claire A., Haufler, Virginia and Porter, Tony (eds), Private authority and International Affairs (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999)Google Scholar ; Hall, Rodney B. and Thomas, Biersteker J. (eds), The Emergence of Private authority in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Cutler, Haufler and Porter, Private Authority, p. 5.

4 Ibid.

5 Cutler, Claire A., Private Power and Global Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

6 While both the IASB and the ICANN are private institutions, their operation and their regulatory outcome is heavily dependent upon, and interlinked with national and regional public regulatory authorities. For a review on the origins and politics of the IASB see Cairns, David, with Creighton, Brian, and Daniels, Anne, Applying International Accounting Standards (TolleyLexisNexis, 3rd ed., 2003)Google Scholar . For ICANN see Klein, Hans, ‘ICANN and the Internet Governance: Leveraging Technical Coordination to Realize Global Public Policy’, The Information Society, 18 (2002), pp. 193–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

7 For works that show how compliance can be achieved without formal hard law instruments see Young, Oran R., ‘Is enforcement the Achilles’ Heel of International Regimes?’, in Governance in World Affairs (Ithaca and London:Cornell University Press, 1999)Google Scholar ; Shelton, Dinah (ed.), Commitment and Compliance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar .

8 For a number of different approaches to the concept of authority see Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947)Google Scholar ; Friedrich, and , C. J. (ed.), NOMOS I: Authority (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958)Google Scholar ; Pennock, Ronald and Chapman, John W. (eds), NOMOS XXIX: Authority Revisited (New York and London: New York University Press, 1987)Google Scholar ; Flathman, Richard. E., The Practice of Political Authority: authority and the Authoritative (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980)Google Scholar ; Raz, Joseph (ed.), The authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Joseph Raz (ed.), authority (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).

9 Flathman, The Practice of Political Authority.

10 Ibid., p. 16–7.

11 Friedman, R. B., ‘On the Concept of Authority in Political Philosophy’, in Raz, , Authority, p. 82Google Scholar .

12 Friedman, ‘On the Concept of Authority’, p. 82.

13 It is obvious that here in authority is defined strictly as the result of a procedural agreement embodied in a set of rules. Obviously, in practice things are not always that clear-cut, and other types of authority, for example, traditional, charismatic or even an authority can at times lead a person to occupy a position of in authority. I would argue however that this does not negate the overall validity of this conceptualisation of in authority because, in modern societies at least, the bureaucratisation and formal institutionalisation of most instances of in authority means that the everyday operation of in authority and therefore eventually even its recognition rely on a set of procedural rules, whatever the initial origins of the authoritative relation. Weber's discussion of the routinisation of charismatic authority illustrates the point well: ‘in its pure form charismatic authority may be said to exist only in the process of originating. It cannot remain stable, but becomes either traditionalized or rationalized, or a combination of both’(Weber, The Theory, p. 364). This can be seen for example in the case of religious authority where the initial charisma of the founder of the religion is conceptualised and passed on as if it were an entity, a ‘[…] charisma of office. In this case the belief in legitimacy is no longer directed to the individual, but to the acquired qualities and to the effectiveness of the ritual acts. The most important example is the transmission of priestly charisma by anointing, consecration, or the laying on of hands’ (Weber, The Theory, p. 366).

14 As we later see this strong condition can be somewhat relaxed for instances of in authority limited to a strictly private setting, for example within a private firm or organisation.

15 Ibid., p. 72.

16 Wendt, Alexander E., ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’ International Organization, 46 (1992), pp. 391–425CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

17 Barnett, Michael and Finnemore, Martha, Rules for the World (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004)Google Scholar .

18 This does not mean that political authority is possible only under a democratic regime. However, it means that other types of authoritative rule (for example, monarchy or theocracy) rest on different sources, for example tradition or charisma, rather than collectively agreed procedures enshrined in some form of constitutional rules. As argued in note 13, eventually they will also come to rely on in authority; however, this procedural set of rules will not necessarily be based on democratic or equalitarian principles. Obviously, the scope of the argument presented here, is limited to modern liberal democratic states, and does not refer to all possible and historical types of political authority.

19 Cutler, Claire A., Haufler, Virginia and Cutler, Tony Porter, ‘The Contours and Significance of Private authority in International Affairs’, in Haufler, Cutler and Porter, , Private Authority, pp. 363–364Google Scholar .

20 Ibid., pp. 365–9. The reason for selecting Cutler, Haufler and Porter as the main target for criticism is not only that they introduced the concept of private authority, but also because their work represents the most comprehensive attempt to conceptualise private authority in global governance to-date.

21 Obviously they also assume a democratic form of government.

22 Kratochwil, Friedrich, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

23 Hall, Rodney B. and Biersteker, Thomas, ‘Private authority As Global Governance’, in Hall, and Biersteker, , The Emergence of Private Authority, p. 211Google Scholar .

24 Flathman, The Practice of Political Authority, p. 20.

25 Akehurst, Michael (ed.), A Modern Introduction to International Law (London and New York: Routledge, 1997, 6th ed.), p. 54Google Scholar .

26 Friedman, ‘On the Concept of Authority’, makes a similar distinction for legitimacy in relation to authority: a) legitimate reasons to obey an authority, and b) legitimate use of force to exact obedience to authority.

27 Oakeshott, Michael, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)Google Scholar . Oakeshott defines an enterprise association as a ‘relationship in terms of the pursuit of some common purpose, some substantive condition of things to be jointly procured, or some common interest to be continuously satisfied’, p. 114.

28 Ibid., p. 116.

29 Ibid., p. 117.

30 Oakeshott introduced the concept of enterprise association in contrast to the ‘civil association’ which describes the relation between the cives (citizens) of a polity. The civil association enjoys ‘self-sufficiency’, a characteristic that Oakeshott describes as ‘being always self-complete in the sense of having no extrinsic substantive purpose’ (Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, p. 110). In this sense the civil association ‘begins and ends with the recognition of rules’ (Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, p. 128). This conceptualisation of civil association is often hard to distinguish in the practice of everyday politics from the pursuit of substantive purposes, which is the characteristic of enterprise associations, and Oakeshott has been criticised for being too formalistic in his definition of civil association (Flathman, The practice of Political Authority; Minoque, Ben, ‘Oakeshott and the Idea of Freedom’, Quadrant, October (1975), pp. 77–83)Google Scholar . Nonetheless, in terms of describing the nature of the modern nation-state, even Oakeshott admits that some kind of combination of the two ideas is needed. Still, while an occasional mix of these two elements in the everyday operation of the state occurs, I do believe that there is a valid qualitative difference in emphasis in the significance of the rules, and consequently the resulting moral obligation, between a civil or more widely construed political association (state), and a private enterprise association.

31 According to Hall and Biesteker, NGOs enjoy a moral authority associated with their emancipatory and progressive agendas (‘The Emergence of Private authority in the International System’, in The Emergence of Private Authority, pp. 14–6). This point does not change the core of the argument presented here. First, this is again a different type of moral authority than the one associated with in authority, since it refers to a substantive ‘morally valued’ goal not the moral duty to obey to a set of agreed procedural rules, and secondly, it is doubtful that the private companies that NGOs' work usually targets are convinced of this moral authority or see it as obligatory. Obviously other types of non-state moral authority exist as well. Religious authority for example is at least partially founded on moral authority. Religion may enjoy moral authority in terms of its pronouncements as statements of high moral value that may induce obedience by believers in how they conduct their private life, again however, at least in liberal democratic states such pronouncements do not create a moral obligation to obey them as political pronouncements, deemed obligatory, for the members of a polity.

32 This as we shall see later, is a significant difference between non-state regulatory organisations and inter-state organisations and one of the reasons that the latter can claim to exercise authority in international affairs.

33 An example involving the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), the predecessor of the IASB, is a case in point. During the 1980s over one hundred Canadian companies referred to the standards produced by the IASC in their statements; by 1998 only five companies referred to IASs in their statements. The explanation for this decline is that during the 1990s, and under the pressure of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the numerous alternative accounting treatments allowed in IASC's standards, and used by Canadian companies, were eliminated. See David Cairns, International Accounting Standards Survey 2000 (Henley-on-Thames: International Financial Reporting, 2001).

34 See Sell, Susan, ‘Multinational Corporations as Agents of Change: The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights’, in Cutler, , Haufler, and Porter, , Private Authority, pp. 169–198Google Scholar , and Sell, Susan, Private Power, Public Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

35 Mytelka, Lynn K. and Delapierre, Michel, ‘Strategic Partnerships, Knowledge-Based Networked Oligopolies, and the State’, in Cutler, , Haufler, and Porter, , Private Authority, pp. 129–149Google Scholar ; Kobrin, Stephen J., ‘Economic Governance in an Electronically Networked Global Economy’, in Hall, and Biersteker, , The Emergence of Private Authority, pp. 43–75Google Scholar .

36 Kobrin, ‘Economic Governance’.

37 Mytelka and Delapierre, ‘Strategic Partnerships’.

38 Hall and Biersteker, ‘The Emergence of Private Authority’.

39 Hall and Biersteker, ‘Private Authority’, p. 214.

40 Juergensmeyer, Mark, ‘The Global Dimensions of Religious Terrorism’, in Hall, and Biesteker, , The Emergence of Private Authority, pp. 141–157Google Scholar .

41 Williams, Phil, ‘Transnational Organized Crime and the State’, in Hall, and Biersteker, , The Emergence of Private Authority, pp. 161–182Google Scholar .

42 Williams, ‘Transnational Organized Crime’, pp. 178–9.

43 As mentioned in the definition of in authority at the beginning of this article, in authority can be found at a corporation, a university or a trade union. This does not contradict the previous analysis on enterprise associations, where as was mentioned, in authority can also be found. Indeed, corporations, universities, trade unions, organised religions, etc., are also examples of enterprise associations. However, as mentioned previously, the difference between in authority in such associations, and public in authority, is that the former performs a facilitating function, towards the pursuit of a specific substantive purpose and does not define the association in the way the latter does, and therefore does not invoke the same kind of moral obligation. While this difference may not create problems for a private corporation pursuing a private goal, as it can change or abandon easily the procedural rules of association depending on the pursuit of its objective, and where arguably moral obligation is much less significant than legal obligation for its operation, it is a significant problem for private governance organisations which aim to perform a public governance function, without however enjoying the necessary public in authority. Besides, such public authority, as already argued, requires a public mandate which private governance organisations also lack.

44 Baldwin, Robert,Colin, Scott and Hood, Christopher (eds), A Reader on Regulation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 2–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

45 Page, Alan C., ‘Self-Regulation: The Constitutional Dimension’, The Modern Law Review, 49:2 (1986), pp. 141–167Google Scholar .

46 Black, Julia, ‘Constitutionalising Self-Regulation’, The Modern Law Review, 59 (January 1996), pp. 24–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

47 This also applies for the widely used example of the independence and self-regulation of various professions. For example, the accounting profession's significant autonomy in the UK, has been granted through explicit state actions, such as legislation, and always exists under the broad supervision of the state, which in times of crisis may decide that self-regulation has failed and step in and assume regulatory control. For detailed accounts of the status and operation of the accounting profession in the UK see, Canning, Mary and O'Dwyer, Brendan, ‘Professional Accounting Bodies' Disciplinary Procedures: Accountable, Transparent and in the Public Interest?’, The European Accounting Review, 10:4 (2001), pp. 725–749CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Sikka, Prem and Willmott, Hugh, ‘The Power of “Independence”: Defending and Extending the Jurisdiction of Accounting in the United Kingdom’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 20:6 (1995), pp. 547–581Google Scholar .

48 See for example, Ruggie, John Gerard, ‘Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations’, International Organization, 47:1 (1993), pp. 139–174CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

49 Hurd, Ian, ‘Legitimacy and authority in International Relations’, International Organization, 53:2 (1999), pp. 379–408CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

50 Ibid., p. 397.

51 For example, following a series of WTO decisions, the EU was obliged to remove in 2001 its discriminatory import policy for banana imports, while in December 2003, following a ruling by the WTO, the US was forced to scrap the steel tariff it had unilaterally imposed the previous year.

52 Hurd, ‘Legitimacy and Authority’, p. 397.

53 For example, every company has to be legally incorporated somewhere.

54 Cutler, Private Power.

55 For empirical studies seeEvans, T. G. and Taylor, M. E., ‘Bottom Line Compliance with the IASC: A Comparative Analysis’, International Journal of Accounting, (Autumn 1982), pp. 115–128Google Scholar ; McKinnon, S. M. and Jannell, P., ‘The International Accounting Standards Committee: A Performance Evaluation’, International Journal of Accounting, (Spring 1984), pp. 19–34Google Scholar ; Nobes, Christopher W., ‘Compliance by US Corporations with IASC Standards’, British Accounting Review, 22 (1990), pp. 41–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

56 See IASC Insight (July 1995).

57 Commission of the European Communities, EU Financial Reporting Strategy: the Way Forward, (COM 2000) 359, 13.06.00.

58 See Barnett and Finnemore, Rules for the World, for an elaboration of the argument that international organisations' authority grants them a degree of autonomy, and related evidence.

59 Rosenau, James M. and Czempiel, Ernst-Otto (eds), Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

60 An example of this process is the participation of NGOs in the implementation of the national Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) in less developed countries in the context of the World Bank's Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC).

61 Cutler, Private Power.

62 The UN Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention) obliges the signatory states to acknowledge and enforce such arbitration awards.

63 A characteristic example is the dual regulatory structure of the European internet domains system, where the European Commission provides rules and principles, while a private organisation, Eurid, is responsible for operating the system and creating detailed rules and procedures. See George Christou and Seamus Simpson, ‘Limitations to transnational governance of the Internet’ in Graz and Nölke, Transnational Private Governance.

64 For a detailed presentation and analysis of the concept of denationalisation see Sassen, Saskia, Territory, Authority, Rights (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar .

65 See for example Cerny, Phipil G., ‘Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action’, International Organization, 49:4 (1995), pp. 595–625Google Scholar ; Ann M. Florini, ‘Who Does What? Collective Action and the Changing Nature of Authority’, in Higgott, Underhill and Bieler, Non-State Actors; Kobrin, ‘Economic Governance’.