Abstract Embedded in the research on legitimate forms of governance beyond the nation state, the project intends to search for context-adequate sources of legitimacy of regional organisations in the global South and looks at their effects and thereby contribute to the explanation of the acceptance of these organizations (AU, ASEAN, Arab League). This is informed by the assumption that the utilisation of context-adequate sources of legitimacy also by international organisations with global… Show more Abstract Embedded in the research on legitimate forms of governance beyond the nation state, the project intends to search for context-adequate sources of legitimacy of regional organisations in the global South and looks at their effects and thereby contribute to the explanation of the acceptance of these organizations (AU, ASEAN, Arab League). This is informed by the assumption that the utilisation of context-adequate sources of legitimacy also by international organisations with global reach will contribute to a stabilisation of the global order. For this purpose, the projects investigates the effects of different sources of legitimacy. Thereby, I refer on the one hand to my own research on legitimate governance on the global level (e.g. Take 2009, 2013a) and on the other hand to the relevant political science, cultural studies, critical studies and sociological regional literature. The main concern of the project is to tie together theory and empiricism of legitimate regional governance in the Global South by a hypothesis-oriented, systematic analysis of different source of legitimacy. Employing the analysis of three regional case studies from different social-cultural contexts, the research project aims first at the identification of manifold sources of legitimacy beyond the OECD-world, second at the investigation of their effects with regard to the acceptance of these organizations on the side of different rule addressees, and third at gaining clues on reform options of these regional organizations as well as global order in general. Show less