International Organizations and Public Opinion: The Case of Climate Change

• In Event: International Actors and Public Attitudes Toward Cooperation

Abstract

When, and under what conditions, do Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) attempt to shape public opinion? For the most part, scholars of international relations tend not to think of IGOs as being particularly interested in reaching out to the public; instead, they assume that IGOs are focused on coordinating actions among their member states’ governments in order to solve collection action problems. After all, the IGO secretariats are supposed to be servants of the states that created them and should not be getting in the way of relations between the member states and their citizens.

But IGOs do attempt to shape public opinion on certain issues. Many of the larger IGOs such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD) devote significant resources to public outreach in certain issue areas. This takes the form of hosting conferences, publishing books and reports, and running social media campaigns. Understanding variation in the nature, timing, and intensity of these efforts is the focus of the larger project of which this paper is a part. This paper looks specifically at the issue of climate change — an issue that has prompted surprisingly uneven levels of public engagement among the IGOs with a stake in the issue. Its initial findings suggest two interesting hypotheses for further testing: (1) IGOs are more likely to engage in public outreach when their member states are facing domestic hurdles to reaching an international agreement; and (2) IGOs are likely to use “under the radar” forms of public engagement when more overt measures could cause embarrassment to certain member states.

Author

• Brian D. Greenhill, SUNY, University at Albany