Publications on ✻ Trym Nohr Fjørtoft

Delegation without a Coherent Nation: Non-Majoritarianism in EU and US Single Market Governance.

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Non-majoritarian institutions like independent agencies and central banks play a significant role in market governance in the EU, the U.S., and everywhere. For many scholars, however, delegation to non-majoritarian institutions requires the embedding in a single, coherent democratic people in order to be legitimate. This view underlies many of the strongest normative critiques of the EU, where the substantial powers of non-majoritarian institutions like the Commisison, the European Central Bank, and many decentralized agencies enjoy no such justification. I argue that this com-mon normative account relies on an unsustainable notion of cultural and political coherence as a prerequisite for legitimacy. In its place, I defend a theory of legitimacy which builds on robust claims to the common good, expertise, and value inputs—all authorized and controlled by thinner democratic procedures. Using the example of single-market governance in the EU and the U.S., I show that legitimacy assessments which presuppose strong cultural and political coherence over-state the differences between the two polities.

Demokratiets stilling i Europa – hva gjør EU? Hva er Norges rolle?

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Denne artikkelen gir en kort oversikt over demokratiets stilling i Europa og hva dette sier om Norge og dets rolle, siden Norge er så sterkt påvirket av hva som skjer i Europa. Vi gir først en oversikt over demokratiets stilling i Europa, med fokus på EU, dets medlemsstater og affilierte ikke-medlemmer som Norge. Vi identifiserer to til dels motstridende tendenser. EU og dets medlemsstater er en viktig demokratiserende kraft, både internt i Europa og i Europas relasjoner til andre deler av verden. Samtidig svekker noen av EUs medlemsstater demokratiet og rettsstaten. EU mangler gode nok virkemidler til å motvirke dette. I andre del av artikkelen undersøker vi Norges rolle og diskuterer om og eventuelt hva Norge kan gjøre for å fremme eller beskytte demokrati i Europa. Siden Norge skårer høyt på ulike demokrati-indekser, og har som uttalt mål å fremme demokrati internasjonalt, starter vi med å disku- tere forestillingen om Norge som mulig modell og forbilde, og vurderer det i forhold til det svært begrensede handlingsrommet som Norges relasjon til EU gir. Til slutt ser vi på hva Norge kan gjøre mer direkte innad i EUs medlems- land for å styrke sivilsamfunn og demokratiserende krefter.

Technical Legitimacy

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In studies of non-majoritarian institutions, there is a widespread idea that political neutrality, epistemic authority, and technical expertise are sources of legitimacy. Empirical studies tend to find that such appeals are effective sources of legitimacy, but theorists are overwhelmingly skeptical of their normative appeal. This paper’s conceptual ambition is to unify the disparate debates under the term technical legitimacy. The paper’s theoretical ambition is to improve on the normative debate on technical legitimacy. Existing defenses fail to robustly satisfy the reasons that ground delegation to non-majoritarian institutions. I propose conditions for accepting technical legitimacy that are reasonably robust against counterfactuals. Technical legitimacy must meet three criteria. Institutions must promote a functionally specified common good; build on sound and undistorted expertise; and, perhaps counterintuitively, contain appropriate venues for value input.

American Services in European Perspective: Why Do Americans Not Care about Interstate Barriers in Construction?

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

The European Union identifies the sector of construction services as a priority for its agenda to remove barriers to cross-border activity. Taking the EU’s efforts as a starting point, this article explores the politics of interstate barriers in construction services in the United States. To what extent do US construction firms encounter internal-border barriers like those targeted by the EU? If they do, how much business mobilization and governmental response do they elicit, and what does that suggest about American federalism more generally? We find many similar barriers inside the United States but practically no mobilization or policy attention around them. Drawing on over fifty interviews with firms, associations, and public officials, we argue that this contrast to the EU highlights two features of American federalism. Institutionally, though promoting a national market motivated the federation’s creation, that goal is nobody’s active job today. Ideationally, the distinctively American skepticism of central government limits a market-building project.

Federal Spirits: Single Markets in Goods in the United States and the European Union and the Case of Spirits Drinks

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

This article compares the politics of internal market governance in the European Union and the United States by focusing on a shippable but highly regulated “sin” good: distilled spirits. A few generations ago, both arenas governed spirits in highly decentralized and varied ways. Over time, Europe has centralized regulation to increase market openness while the United States has seen little change. Today regulatory differences between American states create higher barriers to trade than those which persist among their European counterparts. Drawing on 102 interviews with firms, associations, and public officials, we explain this divergence by two factors: institutions and ideas. The EU’s institutional agents have encouraged market openness, including mobilizing pro-liberalization European businesses, while American firms have no similar public allies. Ideationally, European businesspeople are broadly comfortable with centralized enforcement of single market rules, while Americans view federal enforcement as unrealistic or illegitimate.

Inductive Risk and the Legitimacy of Non-Majoritarian Institutions

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

In political discourse, it is common to claim that non-majoritarian institutions are legitimate because they are technical and value-free. Even though most analysts disagree, many arguments for non-majoritarian legitimacy rest on claims that work best if institutions are, in fact, value-free. This paper develops a novel standard for non-majoritarian legitimacy. It builds on the rich debate over the value-free ideal in philosophy of science, which has not, so far, been applied systematically to political theory literature on non- majoritarian institutions. This paper suggests that the argument from inductive risk, a strong argument against the value-free ideal, (1) shows why a naive claim to value freedom is a poor general foundation for non-majoritarian legitimacy; (2) provides a device to assess the degree of democratic value inputs required for an institution to be legitimate; which (3) shows the conditions under which a claim to technical legitimacy might still be normatively acceptable.

Symmetry in the delegation of power as a legitimacy criterion

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

The EU’s power is expanding, calling for reassessments of its normative legitimacy. This article proposes a novel criterion for assessing the EU’s legitimacy: symmetry in the delegation of power. We illustrate the usefulness of this criterion through an analysis of the European border regime. Existing analyses of the border regime have tended to dismiss it as weak and intergovernmental. We show, to the contrary, that it is both strong and weak. The EU wields significant power in border control but lacks power altogether in immigration policy. This asymmetry has rendered the EU incapable of discharging the moral responsibilities that arise in migration control, posing a novel legitimacy challenge. Finally, we argue that the symmetry criterion generalises and can shed light on the EU’s legitimacy beyond the area of migration.

The Legitimizing Role of Expertise in Frontex after the Refugee Crisis

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

This article explores how the appeal to depoliticized expertise worked to legitimize increased supervisory and executive power to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, after the 2015 refugee crisis. Frontex is an EU agency operating in a highly salient field, removed from hard‐science “gold standards” of evidence, where member states have been reluctant to delegate power and sovereignty. Through a process‐tracing case study, this article finds that appeals to technical neutrality, quantification, and objective indicators nevertheless were central when a new mandate for the agency was negotiated, giving Frontex unprecedented supervisory and executive power. They were also important resources for member states concerned about Frontex’s increased powers. By focusing on an agency at a remove from the natural‐science archetype, this article contributes to the literature on knowledge use in independent agencies. It suggests that technical expertise can be a powerful source of legitimacy even in a field removed from “hard” science.

Beyond expertise: the public construction of legitimacy for EU agencies

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

How is the power of independent agencies legitimized? This is a central question in modern democratic societies. Earlier research has privileged technical expertise as the predominant source of legitimacy for such agencies. While recent contributions have challenged this assumption, we have seen few attempts to systematically analyze the conditions under which different sources of legitimacy are established in public discourse. We address this gap by proposing a conceptual framework of four legitimation arguments and test their prevalence through an empirical analysis of the public legitimation of EU agencies. We hypothesize that the prevalence of each argument depends on characteristics of the agency, especially its scientific ‘hardness’ and its public salience. We test our hypotheses in three steps. We first combine automated text classification and qualitative content analysis to analyze Swedish news media coverage of three EU agencies, 2005–2019. In a third step, we quantitatively analyze aggregated data on the Swedish news coverage of all EU agencies 2005–2019. We find more technical-expertise discourse in coverage of hard-science agencies, and more political-control discourse where agencies are “softer” or more salient. Our findings are therefore relevant for ongoing normative and empirical discussions on the legitimacy of independent agencies.