"Mirror, mirror, on the wall": self-legitimation by international organizations

von Billerbeck, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0154-1944 (2019) "Mirror, mirror, on the wall": self-legitimation by international organizations. International Studies Quarterly, 64 (1). pp. 207-219. ISSN 1468-2478 doi: 10.1093/isq/sqz089

Abstract/Summary

Most analyses of legitimacy and legitimation in international organizations (IOs) focus on the perceptions of external audiences. In so doing, they fail to consider self-legitimation, where an IO undertakes legitimation internally, as a way of developing and reinforcing its identity. Moreover, most studies of IO legitimacy neglect the fact that IO identities are rarely uniform and instead are multiple and conflicting. I address these omissions by examining self-legitimation in three IOs—the UN, NATO, and the World Bank. These organizations are both operational and normative actors, and both institutions dependent on member states and autonomous bodies with independent expertise and capacities. These identities sometimes dictate contradictory goals and practices, forcing the organizations to violate the principles and activities considered appropriate to one of their identities, thus complicating legitimation. Based upon extensive fieldwork and drawing on a range of disciplines, this paper proposes a novel theory of IO self-legitimation: I argue that the need for self-legitimation depends on the degree of identity cohesion and identity hierarchy of the organization. I identify two temporal dimensions of self-legitimation, three categories of self-legitimation practices, and three broader repercussions of self-legitimation, ultimately showing that self-legitimation is a necessary and constitutive activity for IOs.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/87080
Identification Number/DOI	10.1093/isq/sqz089
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Politics and International Relations
Publisher	Oxford University Press
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