The Politicization of International Institutions: Empirical Evidence from Global Economic
Project Leader
Department
Political Science
Abstract
Recent research has noted a trend of increased “politicization” of international politics, i.e. decisions of international institutions are increasingly debated and contested within civil society. What is lacking so far are explanations for this trend. In this project we derive four potential explanations and empirically test them. The first two, society-centered, hypotheses focus on the process of socio-economic modernization on the one hand and opportunity structures for civil society actors on the other. The second pair of polity-centered hypotheses focuses on the decision-making power of international institutions and on their legitimacy. We measure politicization on the basis of a quantitative content analysis of US quality newspaper articles about four different decisions of international institutions in the issue area of international taxation. Our findings indicate that polity-centered approaches fare better in explaining the level and form of politicization in our cases.