Global Governance Under Fire: How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave

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How international organizations can combat populist opposition-and the implications for institutional resilience, legitimacy, and accountability

Populist leaders around the world increasingly reject international organizations, decrying them as constraints on state power and rallying followers against the "global elite" who run them. These instituions-painstakingly built through decades of negotiation and multilateral cooperation-are often seen as passive bystanders, unable or unwilling to push back. In Global Governance Under Fire, Allison Carnegie and Richard Clark challenge this view, arguing that international organizations are, in fact, strategic agents with the tools to resist populist pressures. Offering fresh theoretical insights and original empirical analysis, they investigate how these institutions fight back and how their defensive strategies are reshaping global governance.

Using a multimethod approach that draws on novel data and qualitative evidence, Carnegie and Clark identify four key strategies that international organizations employ-appeasing and sidelining populists and their constituents. They find that while these strategies help fortify global governance against populist opposition, they may also carry unintended consequences, potentially eroding institutional legitimacy and fueling further resistance. A timely and compelling account, the book provides a crucial roadmap for understanding-and safeguarding-the global order.

Author Bio

Allison Carnegie is professor of political science at Columbia University. She is the author of Power Plays: How International Institutions Reshape Coercive Diplomacy and the coauthor of Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation. Richard Clark is assistant professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Cooperative Complexity: The Next Level of Global Economic Governance.