IO Legitimation and the Use of Force
Principal Investigator: Alexander Thompson
The recent conflict in Iraq illustrates the important
role of international organizations in the conduct of
foreign policy and use of force. International support
for the intervention hinged as much on United Nations
approval as on the substantive goals of the policy itself.
American leaders were aware of the benefits of U.N. authorization,
and framed many of their arguments for war in terms of
compliance with U.N. resolutions.
In this project, Thompson set out to explain why the
endorsement of an international organization (IO) such
as the United Nations plays such a key role. Why did foreign
leaders and publics care whether the United States got
U.N. support for its actions?
The answer to these questions rests on the notion of
legitimation, or the process by which IOs transfer legitimacy
onto the actions of states. While most scholars, policy-makers,
and journalists agree that IOs do transfer legitimacy,
they do not explain how this occurs.
Thompson explains this legitimation in terms of information
transmission to foreign audiences, both leaders and their
publics. IO approval signals to these audiences that an
intervention policy is unthreatening and justified. He
is gathering opinion data from around the world on attitudes
toward the two wars (1990-1991 and 2003-present), and
is interviewing foreign policy elites from the United
States, Canada, Turkey, and Europe.
Through this project, Thompson explores a vital policy
issue: Should coercive foreign policies be conducted unilaterally
or multilaterally? The costs of multilateralism –
the inefficiencies of collective decision-making –
are well understood, while the costs of unilateralism
-– often long-term and diffuse -- are not. How U.S.
policy-makers negotiate these tradeoffs will have a lasting
effect on international cooperation and goodwill.
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Alexander Thompson
Assistant Professor of Political Science
The Ohio State University
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