Populist leaders are increasingly criticizing international organizations including NATO, the UNFCC, and the European Union for constraining state power. Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Javier Milei in Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and others around the world have rallied followers against the “global elite” who run international organizations. Some suggest that these institutions are in danger of decline and dissolution, but are populist leaders truly posing an existential threat to international organizations?
“There’s a narrative that populist nationalists are working to systematically undermine international organizations – a backlash to globalization. Countries are exiting these institutions and cutting funding to them, and so they’re declining,” says Kellogg Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Political Science Richard Clark. “But these institutions are contradicting that narrative. They’re versatile. They’re evolving.”
Though international institutions are often seen as passive bystanders, unable or unwilling to push back, Clark’s new book, Global Governance Under Fire: How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave, argues that these institutions act strategically to resist populist pressures. Over ten years, Clark and his coauthor, Allison Carnegie, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, have researched this complex issue bringing forward fresh theoretical insights and empirical evidence showing how international organizations defend themselves and evolve.
“These institutions are persisting and adapting,” says Clark. “They have the means to fortify themselves and insulate themselves from the populist onslaught.”
In Global Governance Under Fire, Clark and Carnegie lay out four key approaches that these institutions use to adapt – appeasing or sidelining populists, and appeasing or sidelining constituents. While these strategies help fortify global governance against populist opposition, they can produce unintended consequences, potentially eroding institutional legitimacy and fueling further resistance.
“These institutions aren't going down without a fight, and as they evolve, it can change the way that they're perceived,” says Clark. “For example, if a populist was giving the institution money or information, the institution could find a different source for money or information – other states or organizations, for instance. So, it can basically freeze out the hostile actor, but that makes the institution less democratic. International institutions are meant to be fora in which countries and leaders with different viewpoints work together.”
In the book, they present new data and qualitative evidence demonstrating how these strategies can strengthen global governance while also impacting institutional legitimacy, accountability, and the future of international cooperation. This book is relevant to scholars of international cooperation in many disciplines: political science, economics, sociology, policy, etc.
“Policymakers, especially in these international organizations, will find this book interesting, because we sort of give a toolkit for how they can evolve in response to different threats that they face,” says Clark, who will be sharing more information about Global Governance Under Fire alongside Carnegie at an in-person and live-streamed book launch hosted by Kellogg on April 14.
“Kellogg has been a great resource, bringing together scholars working on similar topics and allowing me to engage in a rich research community,” says Clark, who also leads the Comparative and International Politics Seminar where invited junior scholars, as well as Notre Dame graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, can present their research for feedback and discussion.
Last year Clark released his first book, Cooperative Complexity: The Next Level of Global Economic Governance, on how international financial institutions cooperate more than they compete. Now he’s working on his third book on how international institutions engage with climate change, tracing the evolution from when they first begin talking about climate change to when climate policies are enacted.
The Kellogg Institute, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, is a leading center for interdisciplinary research dedicated to understanding, strengthening, and renewing democracy worldwide.