Symbiotic Legitimacy: How Stakeholder Consultations at UNESCO Serve Both the Organisation and the Participants

This article examines how broad stakeholder consultations generate and sustain legitimacy in global education governance, focusing on UNESCO’s 2019–2021 Futures of Education initiative. While large-scale participatory setups risk engaging stakeholders in a tokenistic fashion, the article argues that such consultations can provide legitimacy for all actors involved. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders, it contrasts UNESCO’s official framing with participants’ perspectives. The findings reveal a mutually beneficial arrangement where participants engage with UNESCO not necessarily to influence consultation outcomes, but to leverage the organization’s global authority to legitimize and promote their own work locally. In turn, UNESCO draws on participants’ diversity and reputation to reinforce its organizational identity and claims to inclusivity. The article conceptualizes this dynamic as symbiotic legitimation, sustained by an implicit covenant of mutual affirmation. Rather than challenging existing power hierarchies, these consultative spaces may thus ultimately reaffirm existing structures of authority and influence.