Henning Schmidtke

European University Institute | EUI · Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

Recent decades have seen an intensification of international organizations’ (IOs) attempts to justify their authority. The existing research suggests that IO representatives have scaled up self-legitimation to defend their organizations’ legitimacy in light of public criticism. In contrast, this article demonstrates that IOs intensify self-legitima...

This article introduces a new dataset on how international organizations (IOs) justify their authority. For a long time, IOs were believed to derive legitimacy from member-state consent and technocratic problem-solving capacities. Over recent decades, the growing politicization of IOs, political polarization within Western democracies, and power sh...

In the face of public contestation, international organizations (IOs) invoke norms in their public communication to enhance relevant audiences' legitimacy beliefs. This article offers the first comprehensive analysis of what we term normative diversity in IOs' discursive legitimation by drawing on a novel dataset on norm-based justifications in mor...

How can we measure and explain the precision of international organizations’ (IOs) founding treaties? We define precision by its negative – imprecision – as indeterminate language that intentionally leaves a wide margin of interpretation for actors after agreements enter into force. Compiling a “dictionary of imprecision” from almost 500 scholarly...

Legitimacy communication in the media reveals when elites become attentive to international organizations’ (IOs) legitimacy and whether they support or question their legitimacy. The intensity and tone of this communication results in communicative support or legitimacy pressures on IOs. Extant research gives few insights into the scope and nature...

To justify their authority, international organizations (IOs) have long relied on a functional narrative that highlights effective problem-solving based on rational-legal expertise and neutrality. Today, IOs increasingly legitimize their authority in the language of democracy. Yet not all of them do so to the same extent, in the same manner, or con...

The landscape of multilateral development finance has changed dramatically in the past decades. At Bretton Woods, delegates envisioned the World Bank as the focal organization mobilizing financial support for national development strategies. Today, this issue area is populated by no less than 27 multilateral development banks including the Asian In...

Over the past decade, rising authoritarian regimes have begun to challenge the liberal international order. This challenge is particularly pronounced in the field of multilateral development finance, where China and its coalition partners from Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa have created two new multilateral development banks. This article...

Chapter 4 by Falk Lenke and Henning Schmidtke investigates attributions of responsibility for the 2008 financial crisis and for solving it. Lenke and Schmidtke combine quantitative and interpretive analysis to establish who is blamed for the Great Recession and who is entrusted with solving it. The chapter shows that the discursive attribution of ‘...

Why has the 2008 financial crisis not triggered a Great Transformation of the capitalist market economy? The introductory chapter by Steffen Schneider and Henning Schmidtke argues that the stability of legitimating ideas in media discourse plays a role in solving this puzzle. The chapter first outlines the rationale of empirical research on the leg...

Chapter 3 by Henning Schmidtke and Steffen Schneider presents a content analysis of discourse on the legitimacy of the capitalist market economy in the Swiss, German, UK and US quality press. It draws on a ‘grammar’ of legitimation statements to demonstrate that the 2008 financial crisis triggered a legitimation crisis – a moment of uncertainty and...

This volume examines why the 2008 financial crisis with the subsequent Great Recession did not foster a major institutional transformation of the capitalist market economy. It highlights the role of ideas and public discourse in explaining institutional stability and change in the wake of economic crises and other critical junctures. Examining legi...

International organizations’ (IOs) power in shaping global governance outcomes is not only determined by the formal delegation of tasks and issue areas but also by the necessary capabilities to fulfill these tasks. Yet, extant research on the delegation of power to IOs gives few insights into the financial and staff capabilities of IOs and focuses...

While mixed methods designs can in principle combine a large variety of methods, the de facto standard in political science is currently a combination of case studies with regression analysis. To broaden this perspective, we introduce an integrated multi-dimensional mixed methods design in which several methods are used to address different dimensi...

This article addresses the politicisation of European tax governance in mass media. Although taxation is commonly assumed to remain a national prerogative, European institutions have extended their reach far into national tax regimes. Whether this expansion of EU authority towards one of the core functions of the nation state is accompanied by poli...

The politicisation of European governance has become an important subject in debates about the institutional design, day-to-day decision-making and democratic legitimacy of the European Union. This special issue takes stock of this development of politicisation research, including the theoretical development as well as the rapidly expanding body of...

Ob Finanz-, Pflege- oder Bildungskrise - aktuelle Krisen bergen das Potenzial, die Legitimität von Herrschaft zu verändern. Die Stabilität von Legitimationsmustern ist gesellschaftlich, politisch und wissenschaftlich umkämpft und historisch jeweils neu zu reflektieren: Werden Formen der Legitimation etwa von Demokratie, Leistung, sozialen Ungleichh...

The article presents a top-down approach to the study of the empirical legitimacy of international institutions. It starts from the observation that international institutions’ representatives are engaged in various strategies aimed at cultivating generalised support. The article asserts that such strategies should be taken into account to gain dee...

Vielen gilt die aktuelle internationale Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise als potenziell transformativer Moment, der über die ökonomische Sphäre hinaus zu tiefgreifenden sozialen und politischen Veränderungen führen könnte. Nutzt die Kritik diese diskursive Gelegenheit, um sich in der breiteren öffentlich-medialen Debatte in Stellung zu bringen und dami...

The literature on globalization and the democratic nation state is dominated by a crisis diagnosis that holds economic and political internationalization responsible for the waning state capacity in recent decades. However, the causal mechanisms that link internationalization with changing perceptions and evaluations of legitimacy remain underexplo...

Auch ökonomische Ordnungen können an Legitimität verlieren. Viele Beobachter erwarteten, dass mit der Finanzmarkt- und der Eurokrise die Marktwirtschaft in die Kritik geraten würde. Der Band zeigt in empirischen Analysen für vier Länder über 15 Jahre, wie sich die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit und die Bewertung von Marktwirtschaft und Kapitalismus ver...

The legitimacy of international institutions is a contested issue both in terms of concept formation and empirical evidence that attracts attention from across the political sciences. The present contribution posits a relational concept of legitimacy that includes self-justification of rulers on the one hand, and legitimacy beliefs of the ruled on...

Politische Herrschaft konzentriert sich nicht mehr allein auf die Ebene des Nationalstaats. Supra- und internationale Regimes wie UNO, G8 und EU haben im Zeitalter der Globalisierung an Bedeutung gewonnen. Wie aber steht es um die demokratische Legitimität der entstehenden postnationalen Herrschaftsformen? Die Autoren beleuchten, welche Rechtfertig...