Law: Myres S. McDougal Distinguished Lecture on Democracy and International Organizations

Tom Ginsburg, Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, Professor of Political Science, Faculty Director, Malyi Center for the Study of Institutional and Legal Integrity, Faculty Director, Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, University of Chicago

International organizations have come in for attack in recent years, decried by populists as well as authoritarian leaders. At the same time, we have seen the rise of authoritarian international law, in which authoritarian states use international organizations to extend their own power. This lecture presents  a new global dataset on international organizations, to explore whether and how organizations dominated by authoritarians are different from those made up of democracies.  Democracies, it turns out, guard their sovereignty to a greater degree, but also have deeper forms of cooperation. Regional factors are also powerful predictors of international organization form.  The lecture will conclude with a discussion of the prospects for international cooperation in an era of democratic backsliding in the US and elsewhere.

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