Negotiating Legitimacy Within the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement: a Case Study of (De)legitimation Practices of Global Multistakeholder Partnerships

The proliferation of global multistakeholder partnerships (GMSPs), involving public and nonstate actors, raise important questions about the legitimacy of global governance. While most research on legitimacy of GMSPs have assessed the extent to which such partnerships live up to normative criteria of appropriate rule, often in terms of input and output legitimacy, this article takes a sociological perspective on legitimacy as it explores the actors and drivers behind a GMSP’s choice of discursive and institutional legitimation practices. It investigates the interplay between delegitimation and self-legitimation practices and reviews how this evolve over time as the partnership develops. The research looks at the case of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, drawing on rich, empirical material from semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and document analysis. The findings demonstrate how SUN’s discursive and institutional self-legitimation practices change over time in line with criticisms and demands by its different legitimacy granting audiences. The SUN’s Secretariat in particular, is actively and consciously maneuvering between different, and at times conflicting, perceptions among its audiences, as to what SUN should be and do. As the contestation is founded on normative criteria relating to both input and output legitimacy, SUN draws on the technocratic, participatory and fairness narratives, to justify itself. However, only performance-related demands, put forth by donors in particular, have driven SUN’s institutional developments, increasingly widening the gap between its rhetoric and practice. The case advances our insight into the processes of (de)legitimation in global governance, and of GMSPs in particular, and demonstrates how examination of such processes can shed light on underlying struggles for power and influence between public and nonstate actors at the global level