On the legitimacy question

Since I took a pretty good--and appropriate--lashing from Traci, let me see if I can do a better job spelling out what I mean. And since this is such a complicated subject, I'm going to take just one piece of it.

Traci challenges me with:

"In response to Colette's difficult question about legitimacy--this question is a fair one, but it greatly troubles me. It seems to me that if we don't agree that on its face the U.N. or something like it is (or can be) a legitimate body, then this entire conversation is not worth our time..."

I think there are different kinds of legitimacy for a body like the United Nations. There is much about it that is legitimate. Besides, I think it's clear that we cannot function without anarchy on this planet without some governing bodies, even if we are not set up with the true concept of global citizenship required to convey the ultimate, bonafide, genuine legitimacy on them.

But we were talking about a particular kind of legitimacy--the kind that allows you to have a standing army and make war. What I was trying to get at was that there must exist a certain social contract between a body, the people it represents, and other bodies in order to have that particular legitimacy. While the contract of the sovereign state may not be the best way, it's the one we've thought out, and part of what gives that social contract legitimacy is that there is a solid concept of the citizenry that state represents, an express contract to provide for the security of that citizenry, and an express understanding (Westphalia) of the legitimacy that being a sovereign state conveys on the right to have and bear arms.

I read a piece yesterday that Mark Juergensmeyer of UC Santa Barbara wrote for a working paper series at Harvard. In talking about the violent acts of terrorists, he says, "The very act of killing on behalf of a moral code is a political statement. Such acts break the state's monopoly on morally sanctioned killing. By putting the right to take life in their own hands, the perpetrators of religious violence make a daring claim of power on behalf of the powerless, a basis of legitimacy for public order other than that on which the secular state relies."

What I honed in on in that passage was the idea that the state has had a monopoly on morally sanctioned killing. With the UN, we're looking at a pretty broken decision making structure, a set of international norms established there that are not bought into by a significant portion of the world (see pieces of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example) a great-powers, and Western-powers-heavy balance of influence, and no true concept of global citizenship backing it up. So, I need more help thinking through what, very specifically, gives this body the moral legitimacy to use force that is usually reserved for states. There is a bar that is different for morally-sanctioned killing than it is, say, for being sanctioned to participate in trade. I think people arguing to give a standing army to the UN are arguing that the UN has crossed that bar, and I need to see the critical thinking that demonstrates it has. I don't see it. Maybe it's there, but I need to see that thinking clearly articulated.

I hope this makes more sense.