The rise of international organizations (IOs) as public authorities in global governance has reinvigorated the debate about IOs\u2019 legitimacy. Efforts to address legitimacy concerns raised by IOs\u2019 increased role have drawn on their perceived epistemic strength, suggesting that the rationality and soundness of their responses to governance needs lend them legitimacy. Yet IOs\u2019 recent crisis responses have cast a shadow on this popular view. Using the state as the foil, this Article aims to cast light on the relationship between IOs\u2019 institutional learning and legitimacy by investigating IOs\u2019 intervention in recent transnational emergencies. It advances a two-fold argument.<\/p>\n
First, IOs\u2019 institutional learning is limited because it lacks the democratic reflexive and executive modes of learning, which have grown out of the quest for constitutional legitimacy in state formation and underpinned the state\u2019s epistemic strength. Second, given that IOs\u2019 institutional limits and the attendant limited learning capacity originate in their non-sovereign constitutional status, to improve their institutional learning on the model of constitutional legitimacy in the state, IOs will need to be reframed on a constitutional basis\u2014 the required societal foundation of which is still eluding the current condition of global governance. Such a constitutional project only exacerbates IOs\u2019 legitimacy malaise without re-establishing their epistemic superiority or delivering legitimacy for global governance.<\/p>\n