The elusive sources of legitimacy beliefs: Civil society views of international election observers Abstract When do members of civil society view international election observers as legitimate? Motivated by recent work on the legitimacy of international organizations, we evaluate what type of information affects non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs) beliefs about international election observer groups, which include both intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) that seek to exercise authority, often regarding the same elections. Specifically, we examine the effects of two different types of information: information about the observers’ objective substantive features versus information that serves as heuristic shortcuts. Three survey-based experiments – one in Kenya and the others global – prime NGO respondents with information about both real and hypothetical election observer groups in ways intended to affect their votes for which organizations should be invited to observe the next election in their countries. In general, the primes about the objective substantive sources of legitimacy beliefs failed to produce consistent, measurable changes in responses among NGOs across both the hypothetical and real-world observer groups. That is, telling NGOs about the qualities of the organizations work failed to change perceptions. What mattered instead, however, was an organizations’ prominence or type, features that likely served as heuristic shortcuts. The findings, however, varied depending on whether we used hypothetical or real organizations. With hypothetical organizations, NGO respondents preferred other NGOs, suggesting an isomorphism heuristic. Conversely, with real organizations NGO respondents preferred more prominent and well-known intergovernmental organizations. This suggests that the isomorphism and prominence of observer organizations can drive legitimacy beliefs. Given the differences between using real versus hypothetical organizations, however, it also cautions against using hypothetical actors in survey experiments.

Contested world order: The delegitimation of international governance Abstract This article argues that the chief challenge to international governance is an emerging political cleavage, which pits nationalists against immigration, free trade, and international authority. While those on the radical left contest international governance for its limits, nationalists reject it in principle. A wide-ranging cultural and economic reaction has reshaped political conflict in Europe and the United States and is putting into question the legitimacy of the rule of law among states.

Does international pooling of authority affect the perceived legitimacy of global governance? Abstract Recent instances of political backlash against global governance efforts as well as conventional wisdom suggest that there is a link between shifting decision-making authority from the domestic to the global level, on the one hand, and the legitimacy of global governance institutions as perceived by citizens and other stakeholders on the other. We use a population-based survey experiment in Germany and the United States (N = 1600 each) to investigate whether increasing the authority of a global governance institution negatively affects citizens’ legitimacy perceptions. The empirical focus is on climate change, a costly and paradigmatic global governance effort. The results show that shifts of political authority, notably changes towards majority decision making at the international level and automatic implementation of international decisions domestically, do not, on average, significantly affect citizens’ legitimacy perceptions of global governance institutions. Interestingly, the absence of the presumed negative effect is not due to citizens’ incapacity to understand the implications of increasing international authority in the sense that increasing international authority results in a loss of control over climate policy in Germany and the United States. Rather, legitimacy perceptions appear to be shaped by citizens’ perceptions of procedural and performance quality of such efforts in more general terms, and not by authority levels per se. Overall, these findings suggest that there could be more room for increasing the authority of global governance institutions, provided this can be done in ways that ascertain high procedural and output performance quality.

Elite legitimation and delegitimation of international organizations in the media: Patterns and explanations Abstract Legitimacy communication in the media reveals when elites become attentive to international organizations’ (IOs) legitimacy and whether they support or question their legitimacy. The intensity and tone of this communication results in communicative support or legitimacy pressures on IOs. Extant research gives few insights into the scope and nature of elite legitimacy communication and the factors that shape it. This article offers a comparative and longitudinal analysis of the patterns of elite communication in the media. It maps and explains variation in the intensity and tone of legitimacy communication based on a quantitative content analysis of roughly 6500 legitimacy evaluations of the EU, the G8, and the UN in the quality press of four established democracies. A multinomial logistic regression analysis yields three key results. First, in contrast to conventional expectations, there is no clear shift from low intensity and positive tone to high intensity and negative tone. Second, communication intensity is considerably higher for powerful IOs. Third, political events, including security crises and institutional reform, are important drivers of the ebbs and flows of western elites’ communicative support and pressure on major IOs.

The legitimacy and legitimation of international organizations: introduction and framework Abstract While legitimacy dynamics are paramount in global governance, they have been insufficiently recognized, conceptualized, and explained in standard accounts of international cooperation. This special issue aims to advance the empirical study of legitimacy and legitimation in global governance. It engages with the question of when, how, and why international organizations (IOs) gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy in world politics. In this introduction, we first conceptualize legitimacy as the belief that an IO’s authority is appropriately exercised, and legitimation and delegitimation as processes of justification and contestation intended to shape such beliefs. We then discuss sources of variation in legitimation processes and legitimacy beliefs, with a particular focus on the authority, procedures, and performances of IOs. Finally, we describe the methods used to empirically study legitimacy and legitimation, preview the articles of the special issue, and chart next steps for this research agenda.

The rise of international parliamentary institutions: Purpose and legitimation Abstract International parliamentary institutions (IPIs) have become an established feature of international politics. While scholars of international institutions have extensively studied why states delegate to international organizations (IOs) in general, they have said little about the creation of parliamentary bodies. Moreover, IPIs do not fit the functions commonly attributed to international delegation. By differentiating between general-purpose and task-specific IOs, we hypothesize that general-purpose IOs establish and maintain parliamentary bodies that serve their legitimation needs. A nested quantitative and qualitative analysis based on an original dataset on the emergence of IPIs and case studies on the reform of the Economic Community of West African States and the development of the Pacific Islands Forum supports this explanation.

Legitimacy and contestation in global governance: Revisiting the folk theory of international institutions

Transnational public-private governance initiatives in world politics: Introducing a new dataset Abstract This article introduces a new dataset on transnational public-private governance initiatives (TGIs) in world politics. TGIs are institutions in which states and/or intergovernmental organizations cooperate with business and civil society actors to govern transnational problems. Thus, they are a special type of transnational public-private partnership. TGIs have flourished since the late 1990s and, today, govern a broad range of global policy domains, including environmental protection, human rights, health, trade, finance, and security. Yet, existing research lacks the data necessary to map this phenomenon and its variation along dimensions, such as issue areas, governance functions, participation, and institutional design. The Transnational Public-Private Governance Initiatives in World Politics (TGIWP) data is designed for this purpose. It contains detailed information on the scope, functions, participants, and institutional design of 636 TGIs created between 1885 and 2017. I describe the sample generation and discuss coding rules. I also map the proliferation and characteristics of TGIs, and provide an exploratory analysis of the relationship between state participation in TGIs and domestic democracy to show how the new data contributes to enhancing ongoing debates in international relations. The article concludes by discussing how the new dataset may be useful in future research on global governance.

The impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on collective labor rights in developing countries Abstract Do bilateral investment treaties (BITs) affect collective labor rights in developing countries? BITs lock in pre-existing low labor standards that are attractive to vertical foreign direct investment, which represents a potential source of labor grievances and protests. Since foreign investors are likely to challenge labor unrest under stringent BITs, host governments are forced to take measures to undermine workers’ ability to engage in collective action in order to reduce the risk of labor unrest. We argue that governments may choose to undercut collective labor practices rather than laws, resulting in a worsening of labor practices and a larger gap between labor laws and practices. Evidence from 119 developing countries between 1985 and 2012 supports our hypotheses. Our results are robust to various measures of BITs, the inclusion of additional control variables, and different model specifications.

Results from single-donor analyses of project aid success seem to generalize pretty well across donors Abstract Much research on foreign aid presents claims that apply to aid in general but tests these claims using data from one or a small number of donors. This makes it difficult to know if we have learned something about aid, or merely something about one donor. For example, the literature on project aid success has found that per capita GDP growth rates or Freedom House scores in recipient countries correlate with project success. However, these claims have been tested against data from only multilateral donors and often against data from only the World Bank. I re-examine these analyses using a dataset of harmonized project outcome scores for seven diverse donors. Most donors seem to be similarly influenced by recipient-level and project-level factors, though a few notable exceptions exist. Analyses of project aid success that focus on single donors may be able to produce knowledge about aid in general.