Between Law and Transnational Social Movement Organizations: Stabilizing Expectations of Global Public Goods

Abstract

This article draws on Niklas Luhmann's theory and method to present transnational social movement organizations as a solution to the problem of increased expectations of global public goods which fail to find adequate accommodation in law. As a concrete example of the limits of law in this respect, it examines the non liquet of the World Court on the question of the illegality of nuclear weapons. The trajectory of anti-nuclear norms is traced beyond the limits of law to the alternative structure of transnational social movement organizations, and the article presents such organizations as stabilizing increased expectations of global public goods through their recursive decision making and their capacity to continuously project those expectations at the legal and political systems. This generates observations on the concept of`global governance', the structural relations between global civil society and international law, and the role of this form of organization in the evolution of the global political system.

Constitutionalizing Connectivity: The Constitutional Grid of World Society

“…64 Luhmannian functional equivalence, which is not to be equalled with classical functionalism a Á la Durkheim, Malinowski, Merton or Parsons, has three implications: (i) that a given problem can be addressed in multiple ways; (ii) that the essential problem for social systems is to connect to the next future operation; and (iii) that function systems seek to expand, thereby universalizing, their reach. 65 Against this background, when considered as in-between structures oriented towards the problem of establishing a reproductive chain of extraction, transmission, and incorporation, colonialism and global supply chains might be considered functionally equivalent structures, as they are aimed at addressing the same problem. The contemporary form of global supply chains emerged in the wake of decolonialization acting as substitutes' for the type of extraction, transmission, and incorporation that unfolded through colonialism.…”