Closing or Widening the Gap?

This volume clarifies and explains the connections between regional international governance, legitimacy and democracy. It combines normative analysis and theory-driven empirical research in a comparative framework. This book focuses on the quality of democracy and the legitimacy of policymaking in multilevel regional systems.It offers: a much-needed clarification of confusing concepts such as legitimacy, democracy and 'civil society' in non-national political systems; a critical assessment of the quality of democracy and legitimacy within different Regional International Oganizations (RIOs); an examination of networks of non-state actors becoming a kind of transnational civil society and assessing their potential for solving legitimacy deficits; and, an investigation of the impact of democratic conditionality in different RIOs.It aims to deepen our understanding of a relatively new non-state actor on the international scene: the regional international organization. Furthermore, it investigates the potential contribution of transnational non-state actors to the quality of governance at the regional level. It aims to get a better understanding of legitimacy in multilevel systems where RIOs, non-state actors and states interact.