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.
Highlights
Why and when do societal elites contest the legitimacy of international organizations (IOs) in the media? In June 2005, just a few weeks after the failed EuropeanElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users
Constitution referendums in France and the Netherlands, for instance, German newspapers featured an intensive debate between politicians, civil society representatives, and journalists strongly questioning the legitimacy of the European Union (EU)
This varied elite communication about IO legitimacy in the media is puzzling for a number of reasons: First, by publicly discussing IO legitimacy, elites reject the deeply entrenched consensus that global governance institutions are legitimate if they are created through state consent (Buchanan and Keohane 2006)
Summary
Why and when do societal elites contest the legitimacy of international organizations (IOs) in the media? In June 2005, just a few weeks after the failed European. Focusing on the redistributive and ecological consequences of IO policy-making, civil society and left-wing parties have challenged IOs’ role in enforcing global capitalism and US imperialism (Woods 2006) These right and left-wing critics of IOs’ growing authority constitute a strong opposition, which should shape the overall tone of elite legitimacy communication in the media (Zürn 2018). Research on the politicization of international institutions has shown that political identities shape cross-country variance in IO legitimacy evaluations (Zürn et al 2012) In this mechanism, growing IO authority constitutes a significant loss to actors Bwho possess a strong sense of identification with their national community,^ (H3a) high-intensity legitimation is more likely during times of international security crises. (H3b) high-intensity delegitimation is more likely during times of institutional reform
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