Ideology and Legitimacy in Global Governance

While many scholars expect people’s ideological orientations to drive their legitimacy beliefs toward international organizations (IOs), research has found surprisingly limited support for this common assumption. This article resolves this puzzle by introducing the perceived ideological profile of IOs as a critical factor shaping the relationship between citizens’ ideological orientations and their legitimacy beliefs toward IOs. Theoretically, it develops the argument that citizens accord IOs greater legitimacy when they perceive these organizations as ideologically more congruent with their own orientations. Empirically, it evaluates this expectation by combining observational and experimental analyses of new survey evidence from four countries: Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, and the United States. The results show that citizens indeed perceive IOs to have particular ideological profiles and that those perceptions systematically moderate the relationship between people’s ideological orientations and IO legitimacy beliefs. These findings suggest that political ideology is a more powerful driver of legitimacy beliefs in global governance than previously understood.