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Antoinette ScherzLecturer

About me

Antoinette Scherz is Associate Professor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University and Senior Researcher in the ENROL Project — "Enforcing the Rule of Law: What can the European Union do to prevent rule-of-law deterioration from within?" — at ARENA, University of Oslo. She also serves as a research committee member for the Stockholm Center on Global Governance (SCGG), where she leads the theme “Enhancing Global Governance.”

Her research lies at the intersection of political philosophy, international legal theory, and international relations. She focuses on two main areas: the legitimacy of international institutions and transnational democracy. Her current interests include legitimacy and authority, the concept of the people, political autonomy, migration, human rights, and democratic backsliding in the European Union.

Scherz obtained her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Zurich in 2014. While completing her doctorate, she was a Research Fellow at the Swiss National Competence Centre for Excellence in Research Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century. She was then a Research Fellow and Permanent Member of the Board of Directors at the Centre for Advanced Studies Justitia Amplificata at Goethe University Frankfurt (2014–2017). Thereafter, she held postdoctoral positions at PluriCourts, University of Oslo (2017–2020), and at the University of Graz (2021–2023). She has also been a visiting researcher at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University and at McGill University.

 

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Climate scientists as trustees in public reason: the legitimacy of political institutions amid non-epistemic values

    2025. Antoinette Scherz, Laura García-Portela. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy

    Article

    Addressing global challenges like climate change requires both national action and international collaboration. However, it remains unclear under what conditions international institutions, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), can legitimately demand compliance from individuals and states in regulating climate change. One might assume that their legitimacy is derived from the epistemic authority of climate scientists, supporting a belief-based account of political legitimacy. However, the pervasive role of non-epistemic values in climate science challenges this view, necessitating an alternative source of legitimacy. In this paper, we argue that will-based accounts–such as democratic or public reason approaches–better reconcile the technocratic role of climate scientists with democratic decision-making in establishing the legitimacy of international climate institutions. Specifically, we contend that institutions like the UNFCCC should derive their legitimacy from the appropriate role of climate scientists as trustees, who must be held accountable through mechanisms governed by public reason.

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  • How should the EU respond to democratic backsliding? A normative assessment of expulsion and suspension of voting rights from the perspective of multilateral democracy

    2025. Antoinette Scherz. Journal of European Public Policy

    Article

    Democratic backsliding in member states, such as Hungary and Poland, poses a significant challenge to the European Union (EU), undermining its core values of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. This paper addresses the fundamental normative question of how the EU should address such backsliding, by assessing the democratic justifiability of different EU responses. Drawing on the concept of multilateral democracy, the paper argues for the legitimacy and mandate of the EU to influence the domestic political institutions of its member states. It examines the normative implications of different tools, particularly the suspension of voting rights in the Council and the expulsion of backsliding states. By employing the framework of multilateral democracy, the paper offers a novel assessment of these tools, contending that this multilevel understanding reveals the suspension of voting rights as democratically preferable to the expulsion of member states.

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  • Legitimate international authority and institutional diversity

    2025. Antoinette Scherz, Oisin Suttle. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy

    Article

    While international institutions are a frequent and increasing focus of political challenge and critique, evaluating their normative legitimacy raises novel theoretical challenges. International institutions are characterised by diversity in their institutional form, purposes, powers, and procedures, and by mutual interaction, existing in a complex institutional ecosystem and in relations of mutual dependency, cooperation and competition. Theorising their legitimate authority requires taking account of these features. In this introduction, we explain the connections between institutional diversity and legitimate international authority, motivating the project in which the papers in this special issue engage. We then introduce those papers, and highlight some common themes and points of contrast in the approaches adopted.

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  • Applying Different Concepts and Conceptions of Legitimacy to the International Level: Service, Free Group Agents, and Autonomy

    2024. Antoinette Scherz. Moral Philosophy and Politics 11 (1), 63-85

    Article

    International institutions are facing increasing criticism of the legitimacy of their authority. But what does it mean for an international institution to be legitimate? Arthur Applbaum’s latest book provides a convincing new concept of legitimacy, namely, the power-liability view, and a new normative conception, the free group agent account. However, it is not clear how they can be applied to the international level. First, this paper examines how different concepts of legitimacy can be applied to international institutions. Second, it assesses three different conceptions of legitimacy, namely, the service conception, Applbaum’s free group agent account and the autonomy-based conception for the international level. It outlines how on the last conception, international institutions’ legitimacy depends on three different aspects required to protect autonomy: the political power of the institution; its purpose; and its relation to other institutions. Finally, the paper argues that the creation of an international institution should be seen as part of relational legitimacy and that state consent plays an important role to protect the political autonomy of peoples.

    Read more about Applying Different Concepts and Conceptions of Legitimacy to the International Level

  • New perspectives on the legitimacy of international institutions and power

    2023. Gordon Arlen, Antoinette Scherz, Martin Westergren. Journal of social philosophy 54 (4), 445-449

    Article

    In democracies around the world, political forces calling for a rollback of globalization are on the ascendancy. Longstanding consensus about the benefits of free trade and human rights and around the legitimacy of the international institutions enabling these goods has been questioned by successful populist politicians on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Some even claim that the entire liberal international order has become contested, perhaps as never before (Lake et al., 2021). An emerging critique of multilateralism argues that states and peoples should not be shackled by international legal arrangements and international law, but rather, that states should “do it alone.” The picture painted is one where state sovereignty is constrained and undermined by international institutions. This view implies that there is necessarily a tradeoff between multilateralism and state autonomy.

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