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

Podcast: New Books Network
Date: March 2, 2026
Host: Eleonora Matiacci
Guests: Professor Alison Carnegie (Columbia University), Professor Ricky Clark (University of Notre Dame)
Book: Global Governance Under Fire: How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave (Princeton UP, 2026)

Episode Overview

This episode features a discussion with Professors Alison Carnegie and Ricky Clark about their new book, which examines how international organizations (IOs) are responding to the increasing attacks from populist leaders. The authors challenge the prevailing assumption that IOs are simply passive victims in the populist era, instead arguing that these organizations are adaptive, strategic actors. The conversation delves into the autonomy of IO bureaucracies, the nuanced strategies IOs employ to survive, and the consequential trade-offs for legitimacy and transparency in the liberal international order.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Challenging Conventional Wisdom about IOs

• The book pushes back against the belief that IOs are dominated by powerful member states and are helpless in the face of populist attacks. Instead, Carnegie and Clark argue that IOs have developed agency and strategic responses.
• “A lot of our research focuses on how these international organizations are living, breathing entities, right? They're bureaucracies staffed by experts…they have a lot of autonomy, they have distance from member states, and sometimes they can pursue their own preferences.” — Ricky Clark [01:30]
• Importance placed not only on whether IOs are declining but how they are changing and adapting in real time.

2. Why It Matters: Passive vs. Strategic IOs

• The prevalent notion of IOs as passive could lead to misunderstanding their resilience and continued relevance in global governance.
• IOs play critical roles in trade, finance, aid, and peace — their success or failure affects everyday lives, often in unseen ways.
• “Understanding how they're doing that, either successfully or unsuccessfully or in an unbiased way or in a biased way, these have ramifications for real people…because they operate sort of behind the scenes.” — Alison Carnegie [06:02]

3. The Four Key Strategies IOs Use Against the Populist Challenge

Carnegie and Clark identify four core strategies:

• Appeasement: Giving detractors or their publics what they want to try to buy cooperation.
• Sidelining: Circumventing hostile leaders or populations, sometimes by seeking alternative support or operating in secret.
• Targeting Leaders vs. Targeting Publics: IOs can tailor communications and benefits either toward government leaders or directly toward domestic populations.
• Combination: Often using multiple strategies at once, adapting to what “sticks.”

Example: NATO’s response to Turkey blocking Sweden and Finland’s entry:

• Appeased Turkey with anti-terror commitments.
• Sidelined Turkey diplomatically.
• Used public communications (Twitter) to reach domestic audiences.
• Held closed-door meetings to reduce public scrutiny.
• “Often they use all four [strategies] together, sort of just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.” — Alison Carnegie [07:43]

4. Unintended Consequences: Legitimacy and Transparency at Risk

• Defensive strategies help IOs survive but can erode legitimacy, democratic accountability, and transparency.
• Over-reliance on secrecy, for example, may reduce the perceived democraticness of IOs.
• “If the members that get the most goodies from the organization are just the ones that complain the loudest, how is that legitimate?” — Alison Carnegie [14:13]
• The more IOs rely on any one strategy, the greater the risk to their legitimacy.

5. Research Design & Methodology

• Multi-method approach: elite interviews, case studies, original data analysis, observational regression.
• Acknowledges difficulties in causal inference due to the non-random nature of international cooperation.
• Aim: triangulate findings across methods for robust conclusions.
• “A good scholar of international organizations is going to have many of these tools available to them.” — Ricky Clark [15:21]

6. Anticipated Criticisms & Addressing Pushback

• Some may resist the authors’ argument given high-profile examples of withdrawal, funding cuts, or general skepticism about multilateralism’s future.
• The authors clarify they do not claim IOs are becoming stronger, but that they are adapting, surviving, and functioning in new — sometimes paradoxical — ways.

7. Practical Implications for IO Leaders

• Don’t overuse any single strategy; a blend mitigates risks to legitimacy and transparency.
• Proactively plan and diversify, whether in funding sources or communications, instead of waiting for populist challenges to arise.
• “Rather than just wait to be challenged…be proactive and develop tools and a plan for how to approach this kind of resistance.” — Alison Carnegie [21:01]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On IO Agency:
  “These institutions have the incentives and ability to work around these powerful states when they start to attack international institutions.” — Ricky Clark [01:30]

• On Adaptation:
  “It’s not as simple as, well, they’re passive and struggling. Instead, they have this ability to react in the moment.” — Ricky Clark [04:46]

• On Unintended Consequences:
  “The more it becomes politicized in any of these dimensions, I think you get into sort of dangerous territory because they might lose legitimacy and acceptance from the members.” — Alison Carnegie [14:13]

• On Methodological Challenges:
  “Ideally, we would ask populists to randomize which international organizations they are challenging and then…find the causal effect. And we just don’t have that sort of ability in the international setting.” — Alison Carnegie [16:44]

• On Takeaways for Leaders:
  “If you rely too heavily on any one of these strategies…legitimacy, transparency, democraticness of global governance is being undermined.” — Ricky Clark [20:03]

• Main Takeaway in a Nutshell:
  “Populism is politicizing international organizations.” — Alison Carnegie [22:15]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Motivation for Study
  [00:52]–[03:12]
• Why Passive vs. Strategic IOs Matters
  [04:46]–[06:50]
• The Four Strategies & NATO Example
  [07:43]–[11:25]
• Unintended Consequences & Legitimacy Issues
  [12:09]–[15:00]
• Research Design & Multi-Method Approach
  [15:21]–[16:44]
• Anticipated Criticisms
  [17:46]–[18:57]
• Advice for IO Leaders
  [20:03]–[21:43]
• Core Takeaway
  [21:58]–[22:25]
• Next Project Preview
  [22:43]–[24:10]

Closing

The conversation concludes with a look ahead: Carnegie and Clark are beginning to investigate how IOs may affect the tools and strategies of coercion among states, querying longheld beliefs about the relationship between international cooperation and the reduction of coercion.

For readers and listeners alike, the episode offers a nuanced, well-grounded exploration of how international organizations continue to adapt in a turbulent, populist political environment — not as passive victims, but as active, strategic agents, albeit ones whose very survival is reshaping the liberal order they once quietly upheld.