Expanding or defending legitimacy? : why international organizations intensify self-legitimation

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dc.contributor.authorSCHMIDTKE, Henning
dc.contributor.authorLENZ, Tobias
dc.date.accessioned2023-12-14T12:34:30Z
dc.date.available2023-12-14T12:34:30Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.descriptionPublished online: 24 July 2023en
dc.description.abstractRecent decades have seen an intensifcation of international organizations’ (IOs) attempts to justify their authority. The existing research suggests that IO representatives have scaled up self-legitimation to defend their organizations’ legitimacy in light of public criticism. In contrast, this article demonstrates that IOs intensify self-legitimation to mobilize additional support from relevant audiences when their authority increases. We argue that self-legitimation aims primarily to achieve proactive legitimacy expansion instead of reactive legitimacy protection. We develop this argument in three steps. First, we draw on organizational sociology and management studies to theorize the connection between self-legitimation and an organization’s life stages. Second, we introduce a novel dataset on the self-legitimation of 28 regional IOs between 1980 and 2019 and show that the intensity of self-legitimation evolves in phases. Third, we provide a multivariate statistical analysis and a brief vignette on the African Union, both of which indicate that IOs that shift from unanimity or consensus to majority voting tend to intensify self-legitimation.en
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationThe review of international organizations, 2024, Vol. 19, pp. 753-784en
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/s11558-023-09498-0
dc.identifier.endpage784
dc.identifier.issn1559-7431
dc.identifier.issn1559-744X
dc.identifier.startpage753
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/76179
dc.identifier.volume19
dc.language.isoenen
dc.orcid.uploadtrue*
dc.publisherSpringeren
dc.relation.ispartofThe review of international organizationsen
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessen
dc.rights.licenseAttribution 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/*
dc.titleExpanding or defending legitimacy? : why international organizations intensify self-legitimationen
dc.typeArticleen
dspace.entity.typePublication
eui.subscribe.skiptrue
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-3496-1649
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-6031-5261
person.identifier.other53392
person.identifier.other38988
relation.isAuthorOfPublication767a2fbe-6bab-4790-8cf8-ccccac9f38c1
relation.isAuthorOfPublication489e71d5-413e-4f6d-b8bb-e1ebc18cbafb
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery767a2fbe-6bab-4790-8cf8-ccccac9f38c1
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