Erosion of International Organizations’ Legitimacy under Superpower Rivalry
Evidence on the International Court of Justice
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6243648 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Enze Han (0000-0001-8948-3843, Hong Kong Jockey Club), Xiaojun Li (0000-0003-4832-8278, University of British Columbia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Pages | 1-22 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0008-4239 • E-ISSN: 1744-9324 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s000842392300063x |
| OpenAlex | W4390980009 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 76 |
This article investigates how superpower rivalry affects public perceptions of international organization (IO) legitimacy in the hegemon. We argue that the representation of a superpower rival state at an IO in the form of its key decision maker's nationality can dampen the IO's perceived legitimacy within the rival power. We test this argument using a survey experiment in the United States under President Trump, where we manipulate the nationality of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) judge who casts a tie-breaking vote against the United States. Our results show that when the judge is Chinese, there is a strong and robust dampening of Americans’ perceptions of the ICJ's legitimacy, with no comparable effect arising when the judge is from other countries, including Russia. Replication of the experiment in the United States under President Biden offers external validity for our findings, which may have important implications for the future of the liberal international order
Argument (complex analysis · China · Economics · Immigration · International court · International law · International relations · Law and economics · Legitimacy · Nationality · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Public international law · Rivalry · Sociology · Superpower · European Union Policy and Governance · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies
Imagery and verbal processes.
A Theory of Global Governance
Introduction to Psychometric Theory
Controlling Institutions
Measuring International Authority
Public Opinion and the Legitimacy of International Courts
The legitimacy and legitimation of international organizations
Prolific.ac—A subject pool for online experiments
Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote
The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations
Trust and Mistrust in International Relations
Summary Report of the Aapor Task Force on Non-probability Sampling
Grab ‘em by the masculinity
Who are these people?” Evaluating the demographic characteristics and political preferences of MTurk survey respondents
Validating the demographic, political, psychological, and experimental results obtained from a new source of online survey respondents
Chinese Public Opinion about US–China Relations from Trump to Biden
Geopolitics, Nationalism, and Foreign Direct Investment
Dealing With Human Rights in International Organizations
Effects of civil society involvement on popular legitimacy of global environmental governance
The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions
Between dominance and decline
Institutional sources of legitimacy for international organisations
The social legitimacy of international organisations
The Changing Fundamentals of US-China Relations
China's Century? Why America's Edge Will Endure
China in a World of Orders
Bound to Fail
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in the Twenty-first Century
Social Distancing during the Covid ‐19 Pandemic
National Judges and Judges Ad Hoc of the International Court of Justice
Beyond the Turk
Rarely safe to assume”
Macro Salience
Economic Integration and Mass Politics
Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity
Survey Design, Order Effects, and Causal Mediation Analysis
Public Reactions to International Legal Institutions
Political Justice
Recruiting large online samples in the United States and India
Judicial Behavior and Public Opinion
Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research
Weaponizing Interpol
Understanding Authoritarian Regionalism
International Security Institutions, Domestic Politics, and Institutional Legitimacy
Power Shift or Paradigm Shift? China's Rise and Asia's Emerging Security Order
This Time It’s Real
The Legitimacy of the UN Security Council
The Soviet Union and the United Nations
Coercion Through IOs
Domestic Politics, China's Rise, and the Future of the Liberal International Order
Why Comply? The Domestic Constituency Mechanism
International Law and Public Attitudes Toward Torture
The United States and the United Nations
Calculation, Community and Cues
The Informational Role of International Institutions and Domestic Politics
Elite Communication and the Popular Legitimacy of International Organizations
An ‘A’ for Effort
Visual Literacy and Science Communication
Negative surprise in UN Security Council authorization
Losing, but Accepting
Staffing the United Nations
Unpacking the Black Box of Causality
Brexit identities and British public opinion on China
The end of liberal international order
Emerging World Order? From Multipolarity to Multilateralism in the G20, the World Bank, and the IMF
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |