Making sense of citizen desire for IO democracy: an analysis of public opinion across 44 countries
| Author | Sijeong Lim,Hyo Won Lee |
| DOI | 10.1177/13540661221091361 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221091361
European Journal of
International Relations
2022, Vol. 28(2) 471 –494
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661221091361
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JR
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Making sense of citizen desire
for IO democracy: an analysis
of public opinion across 44
countries
Hyo Won Lee
Incheon National University, South Korea
Sijeong Lim
Korea University, South Korea
Abstract
Why do some citizens across the globe prioritize the democracy of international
organizations (IOs), while others place more emphasis on their effectiveness? We
suggest that this difference in attitude may reflect two distinct perspectives on the
subjects of IO democracy: (1) a citizen-centered perspective focusing on substantive
citizen representation and IO accountability to citizens and (2) a state-centered
perspective centering on fair state representation and IO accountability to member
states. We examine these two perspectives among citizens worldwide and determine
how these perspectives shape preferences for IO democracy and effectiveness. Our
empirical analysis uses the latest wave of the World Values Survey, which covers
more than 50,000 individuals across 44 countries for the period 2017−2020. We find
that citizens’ democratic activism and the perceived democratic deficit in domestic
governance, which we believe to be associated with a citizen-centered perspective in
international governance, do not lead to the prioritization of IO democracy. Instead,
the underrepresentation of their country in major IOs and confidence in the national
government have a significant and positive association with the prioritization of IO
democracy. These results suggest that the prioritization of IO democracy expressed by
the public primarily reflects a state-centered perspective of international governance
rather than a citizen-centered one.
Corresponding author:
Sijeong Lim, Division of International Studies, Korea University, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02841, South Korea.
Email: sijeonglim@korea.ac.kr
1091361EJT0010.1177/13540661221091361European Journal of International RelationsLee and Lim
research-article2022
Article
472 European Journal of International Relations 28(2)
Keywords
International organizations (IOs), public attitudes, democracy, citizen representation,
state representation
Introduction
There has been a growing volume of research on the adoption of democratic norms and
procedures by international organizations (IOs) across issue areas (Grigorescu, 2015;
Rocabert et al., 2019; Tallberg et al., 2014; Tallberg and Zürn, 2019). It has been sug-
gested that one of the key driving forces behind this move is the strong and visible
public pressure on IOs. Protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the late 1990s, for instance, drew attention to the
argument that globalization led by these IOs “sacrificed democratic politics to the
demand for functional international cooperation and economic liberalization” (Nanz
and Steffek, 2004: 314). The increased awareness and politicization of the democratic
deficiencies of IOs have led IOs to increasingly rely on democratic narratives and to
introduce institutional reforms (Dingwerth et al., 2020; Gregoratti and Uhlin, 2018).
Few studies, however, have explored public attitudes toward IO democracy in a cross-
national setting, in particular determining which citizen groups call for and welcome the
move toward more democratic governance by IOs. It may be expected that the citizens
of advanced democratic countries would be more enthusiastic about democratic IO gov-
ernance because of their higher familiarity with democratic institutions. Indeed, it has
been the citizens of wealthy democracies in North America and Europe who have led the
most well-known mass protests against IOs (e.g. the Seattle Anti-WTO protest of 1999,
the Prague anti-IMF and World Bank protest in 2000, and the Geneva anti-WTO protest
in 2009).
At first glance, however, this expectation does not appear to have any empirical sup-
port. Using data from the latest wave of the World Values Survey (WVS), we examined
how citizens across the globe differ in their prioritization of the democratic governance
and functional effectiveness of IOs. A new survey question was recently added to the
WVS: “Nowadays there’s a lot of talk about international organizations. People some-
times say that international organizations should prioritize improving people’s lives,
even if this may imply that decisions are not made democratically. What do you think
should international organizations prioritize, being effective or being democratic? If
your views are somewhat mixed, choose the appropriate number in between.” The
respondents answer on a 10-point ordinal scale, with 1 representing the strong prioritiza-
tion of effectiveness and 10 the strong prioritization of democratic decision-making.1
Surprisingly, neither the regime type nor the wealth of a nation appears to systemati-
cally account for any observed variation in the responses to this question.2 As summa-
rized in Figure 1, the prioritization of IO democracy is strongest in Iran (a developing
nondemocracy) and Vietnam (a developing nondemocracy), followed by Turkey (a
developed nondemocracy), and Indonesia (a developing democracy). This raises the
question of what might then explain the observed variation in public attitudes regarding
the prioritization of democratic governance or effectiveness among IOs.
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