The rise of democratic legitimation: why international organizations speak the language of democracy

Abstract

To justify their authority, international organizations (IOs) have long relied on a functional narrative that highlights effective problem-solving based on rational-legal expertise and neutrality. Today, IOs increasingly legitimize their authority in the language of democracy. Yet not all of them do so to the same extent, in the same manner, or consistently over time. In this article, we offer a comprehensive theoretical and empirical account of democratic legitimation in global governance. Our analysis builds on a new dataset, measuring the extent to which global IOs use democratic narratives in legitimizing their authority throughout the period from 1980 to 2011. The central findings are threefold. First, our data reveal a far-reaching rise of democratic legitimation in global governance. For many organizations, this increase remains relatively modest; for others, the democratic legitimation narrative becomes central. Second, this variation is mainly explained by a combination of two factors: (a) public visibility and protest constitute the driving forces of democratic legitimation and (b) IOs’ reaction to these legitimacy pressures unfolds in a path-dependent manner. Once organizations begin to take up democratic narratives, it seems to become costly to leave this path and shift to yet another set of norms. By contrast, the conventional wisdom that democratic legitimation follows in the footsteps of internationalized authority is not supported by our analysis.

The Increasing Representativeness of International Organizations’ Secretariats: Evidence from the United Nations System, 1997–2015

“…1 Like many formal institutions, international organizations (IOs) appear to be under pressure to garner legitimacy as an important organizational resource (Bexell 2014;Tallberg and Zürn 2019), and increasingly to do so by reflecting normative criteria associated with representative governance (Grigorescu 2015;Rapkin, Strand, and Trevathan 2016;Stephen 2018;Dingwerth, Schmidtke, and Weise 2020). While there has been considerable discussion and debate about the extent to which IOs can be "democratic" and "representative" in principle (Bodansky 1999;Dahl 1999;Buchanan and Keohane 2006;Koenig-Archibugi 2011), attention is turning to the investigation of how demands for democratic forms of legitimation have actually impacted the behavior and characteristics of IOs in practice (Grigorescu 2007(Grigorescu , 2015Tallberg et al 2014;Rocabert et al 2019;Dingwerth, Schmidtke, and Weise 2020). In this article, we extend this research agenda by theorizing and mapping the changing role of power, functional effectiveness, and representative legitimacy in the national composition of IO staffs (see also Christensen and Yesilkagit 2019;Christensen 2019).…”

“…Building on insights from public administration and management studies (Meier 1975(Meier , 2018Suchman 1995;Chiu and Sharfman 2011) and the literature on the politicization of IOs (Zürn 2014;Ecker-Ehrhardt 2018;Rauh and Zürn 2020;Dingwerth, Schmidtke, and Weise 2020), we propose that IOs are increasingly sensitive to the demands of their normative environments. As representativeness gains in strength as a standard for political legitimacy in the eyes both of states and broader societal audiences, IOs respond by becoming more representative in their staffing patterns.…”

To Yield or Shield? Comparing International Public Administrations’ Responses to Member States’ Policy Contestation

“…Our results bear implications for at least three strands of literature. First and foremost, our finding that IPAs do not confine their public communication in the face of contestation to positive self-representations and accommodation, but also engage in negative, adversarial responses, contrasts a common assumption in the IO self-legitimation literature (Zaum 2013b;Gronau and Schmidtke 2016;Schmidtke 2018;Dingwerth et al 2019aDingwerth et al , 2019bRauh and Zürn 2020;Tallberg and Zürn 2019). This research strand could profit from broadening their perspective on IO self-legitimation in the face of contestation to also include adversarial responses.…”

“…A fast-growing literature strand found that, faced with such threats to their legitimacy, IOs professionalized their public communication (Ecker-Ehrhardt 2018b) and engaged in public self-legitimation (Zaum 2013b;Gronau and Schmidtke 2016;Schmidtke 2018;Rauh and Zürn 2020;Tallberg and Zürn 2019;Dingwerth et al 2019aDingwerth et al , 2019b. Far from being the passive, unpolitical and technocratic actors of the past, IOs are increasingly able and willing to strategically influence public discourse as "managers of (de)politicization and legitimacy" (Ecker-Ehrhardt 2018a, p. 23).…”

Singing Together or Apart? Comparing Policy Agenda Dynamics within International Organizations

“…Press releases are issued regularly, present the self-reported actions and activities of the administration, and are met with relatively few institutional constraints (Ecker-Ehrhardt 2018). They are more encompassing than director generals' annual reports, and given that these reports are produced with an eye towards being presented in the plenary session we would expect them to be more tailored towards the member states than press releases, which are aimed at the general public (Dingwerth et al 2020). To assess the member states' policy priorities, in turn, we refer to the decisions and resolutions made in the IOs' key decision-making bodies.…”