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Agents, audiences and peers: why international organizations diversify their legitimation discourse
[journal article]
Abstract In the face of public contestation, international organizations (IOs) invoke norms in their public communication to enhance relevant audiences' legitimacy beliefs. This article offers the first comprehensive analysis of what we term normative diversity in IOs' discursive legitimation by drawing on a... view more
In the face of public contestation, international organizations (IOs) invoke norms in their public communication to enhance relevant audiences' legitimacy beliefs. This article offers the first comprehensive analysis of what we term normative diversity in IOs' discursive legitimation by drawing on a novel dataset on norm-based justifications in more than 32,000 paragraphs of text published by 28 regional IOs between 1980 and 2019. We show that IOs vary strikingly in this respect: whereas some IOs invoke a narrow set of norms, often focused on economic welfare and functional capability, others engage a wide variety that includes security, national sovereignty, democracy or human rights. To explain this variance, we specify and test an explanatory framework that emphasizes IO audiences, agents and peer organizations as distinct origins. Our statistical analysis reveals that IOs diversify their discursive legitimation to 1) address heterogeneous audiences, 2) reconcile competing beliefs amongst agents themselves, and 3) integrate the legitimation of peer IOs. These findings indicate that IOs respond to the growing complexity of international cooperation in their discursive legitimation and may raise policy-makers' awareness of the difficulties in contemporary legitimation efforts.... view less
Keywords
international organization; legitimacy; communication; public communications; public opinion; perception; acceptance; standard; security; sovereignty; democracy; human rights; analysis
Classification
International Relations, International Politics, Foreign Affairs, Development Policy
Document language
English
Publication Year
2023
Page/Pages
p. 921-940
Journal
International Affairs, 99 (2023) 3
Issue topic
Legitimizing international organizations
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiac323
ISSN
1468-2346
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0