Technocracy, populism, and the (de)legitimation of international organizations
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661241278208 |
| Author | Reinout van der Veer,Gustav Meibauer |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
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JR
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661241278208
European Journal of
International Relations
2024, Vol. 30(4) 946 –971
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661241278208
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
Technocracy, populism,
and the (de)legitimation of
international organizations
Reinout van der Veer
and Gustav Meibauer
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Abstract
Our understanding of the contestation of liberal international order relies on an intuitive
dualism. Technocratic norms underpin the legitimation of international organizations
(IOs) because IOs embody a functional and depoliticized mode of problem-solving
based on expertise and non-majoritarianism. Populist norms challenge IO authority
as IOs create constraints on the popular will of the “true people.” We empirically
examine whether this duality extends to the actors engaging in IO (de)legitimation by
leveraging a novel and unprecedentedly fine-grained database on IO (de)legitimation
by national governments. We find that (de)legitimation patterns of governments with
technocratic or populist tendencies are far more dynamic and diverse than a dualistic
account suggests. In particular, we find complex patterns of (de)legitimation that suggest
challenges to and defenses of IO authority are driven more by a strategic, as opposed
to an ideological, logic. We outline implications for the literatures on the international
liberal order, technocracy, and populism.
Keywords
Technocracy, populism, international organizations, legitimacy, global governance, (de)
legitimation
The international organizations (IOs) that underpin the international liberal order require
legitimacy to function.1 When such legitimacy is absent, for example during periods of
Corresponding author:
Reinout van der Veer, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Management, Radboud University
Nijmegen, Elinor Ostrom Building 02.164, Heyendaalseweg 141, PO-Box 9108, 6525 HP Nijmegen, The
Netherlands.
Email: reinout.vanderveer@ru.nl
1278208EJT0010.1177/13540661241278208European Journal of International Relations X(X)Van der Veer and Meibauer
research-article2024
Original Article
Van der Veer and Meibauer 947
legitimacy crisis (Sommerer et al., 2022), state and non-state actors may turn away from
international cooperation, subvert international law, or exit international institutions alto-
gether. Political discourse on IOs matters in this regard, as how political leaders talk
about IOs shapes the attitudes of their constituencies toward these institutions. When
general publics no longer believe the exercise of authority by IOs is justifiable, they may
reject further international cooperation at the polls (Dellmuth et al., 2022a; De Vries
et al., 2021; Zürn, 2018).2 This makes the contestation of IOs—the iterative process, that
is sequences and exchanges, of legitimation and delegitimation of IO authority by state
and non-state actors—an important area of research in International Relations (IR; e.g.
Börzel and Zürn, 2021; Söderbaum et al., 2021; Tourinho, 2021).
But who contests IO authority, and why? Recent research has turned to explaining the
contestation of IOs in terms of its institutional, discursive, and behavioral practices (see
e.g. Bexell et al., 2022; Dellmuth et al., 2022b; Rauh and Zürn, 2020; Tallberg and Zürn,
2019). Both technocracy and populism play important roles in these analyses of IO con-
testation, if often implicitly. Traditionally, IO legitimation has a strong basis in techno-
cratic norms and ideas (Rauh and Zürn, 2020: 587; Zürn, 2018: 77–84). In turn, norm
entrepreneurs have been key to the emergence and wide-spread acceptance of IO author-
ity, and experts within IOs have shaped the norms that IOs uphold (Finnemore and
Sikkink, 1998: 899): in particular, both technocratically minded bureaucrats and incum-
bent politicians have played an important role in advocating for, and subsequently
defending, the delegation of state authority to IOs from the outset (see e.g. Steffek, 2021:
129), and more recently during episodes of international crisis (Bickerton and Accetti,
2021: 124–126). Such delegation places public authority at arm’s length from citizens
and national legislatures, transferring it instead to entities that promise to deliver effec-
tive solutions to cross-border policy problems by virtue of their political neutrality and
sectoral expertise. Today, IOs still legitimate much of their activities by appealing to
technocratic ideas, such as nonpartisanship, rationality, and performance (Bexell et al.,
2022).
Populists’ norms and ideas, in turn, are generally assumed to play a key role in the
global backlash against IOs. Where technocracy constrains popular sovereignty, popu-
lists are argued to contest what they cannot directly influence (Börzel and Zürn, 2021).
Specifically, populists reject IOs by projecting the basic Manichean antagonism of the
“people” versus the “elite” which forms the basis of populist politics at home onto the
international sphere (Copelovitch and Pevehouse, 2019; Hafner-Burton et al., 2019).
They target policies and organizations whose “inherent multilateralism and internation-
alism populist anti-globalists reject in the name of reclaiming national sovereignty and
popular authority” (Löfflmann, 2022: 2; also: Destradi et al., 2022; Jenne, 2021). IOs in
particular promote and safeguard core values and practices of international order which
different populists (from the left and right of the political spectrum) challenge as part of
a supposedly (neo)liberal elite project, such as collective security, international law and
human rights, or free-trade agreements (Ikenberry, 2017; Voeten, 2020). Donald Trump’s
subversion of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the pandemic and Nigel
Farage’s successful Brexit campaign are stark and oft-cited examples.
The above points to an (at least implicit) assumption in the literature that suggests
technocrats should be expected to legitimate IOs, whereas populists delegitimate them.
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