How States Recognize International Organizations: Evidence from UN General Debates, 1946–2024
Collaborators: Martin Binder, Monika Heupel
This project examines what international organizations (IOs) are publicly “recognized for” by their main constituents—states—over nearly eight decades. Using a comprehensive content analysis of UN General Debate speeches (1946–2024), we trace how governments attribute policy functions and authority to different components of IOs (e.g., intergovernmental bodies, expert groups, secretariats) and how patterns of deference, appraisal, critique, and defiance evolve over time. We combine manual and automated text analysis to map long-run shifts in the public standing of rule-based governance, and we test whether changes are systematically associated with ideological shifts in domestic politics while accounting for alternative explanations such as institutional proliferation and changing power differentials.
Delegation Politics of Far-right Governments in the UNFCCC
FARRIO →Collaborators: Franziska Höhne, Alexandros Tokhi, Lisbeth Zimmermann
Far-right parties are increasingly represented in democratic governments worldwide, with potentially important consequences for multilateral diplomacy inside international organizations. This project studies how far-right government participation affects delegation politics at UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COPs)—a central arena where states negotiate agendas, policies, budgets, and institutional reforms. Drawing on original data on more than 100,000 COP participants (1995–2024), we analyze whether the long-observed shift toward more technocratic, expertise-oriented global governance is reflected in delegation size, portfolio composition, and personal continuity—and whether, and how strongly, far-right incumbency alters these trends.
Engaging the Enemy? IO Social-Media Communication, National-Populist Contestation, and Public Resonance
Social media has become a key arena for nationalist-populist contestation of “liberal” international organizations. Focusing on Twitter/X communication surrounding the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), this project analyzes whether and how IO digital communication adapts in the face of intense, ideologically charged opposition online—and whether such adaptation improves public resonance. Using qualitative and quantitative content analysis, we show that UN messaging remained highly selective and largely “stayed on message” (emphasizing migrant protection, the broader benefits of migration, and the value of global migration governance), while also increasingly countering critics by framing claims as myths lacking facts. More nuanced shifts include greater references to host-society benefits and national sovereignty. However, engagement patterns suggest that accommodation remained limited: strategies that grew more prominent tended to reduce the share of critical audiences interacting with UN tweets.
Authority and Resonance in IO Social Media Communication
Collaborator: Matthias Hofferberth
International organizations have rapidly expanded their use of social media to communicate with diverse constituencies, yet we still know little about what makes such communication effective—or how it relates to public recognition of IO authority. This project examines the public resonance of the World Health Organization’s social-media communication and theorizes “affirmative resonance” as one pathway through which the WHO can bolster its role as a global health governor. We focus on three mechanisms: (a) authoritative calls for action and evaluations of public-health performance, (b) personalization through WHO officials alongside institutional accounts, and (c) socio-technical affordances such as visuals and hashtag activism. Using a large-N analysis of COVID-19-related WHO posts and retweet counts, we find that authoritative claims, personalization, visuals, and hashtags each increase affirmative resonance on average. Importantly, visuals condition the effect of personalization when authority is claimed, consistent with the idea that perceived authenticity shapes how personalized authority is received online.