When Covid-19 broke out, many interpreted it as a crisis that would lead to fundamental changes in different areas of life. The article aims to assess whether this also applies to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). By analysing the websites of a sample of intergovernmental organizations, we ask: How did the Covid-19 pandemic affect the behaviour of intergovernmental organizations? How can one explain this behaviour of intergovernmental organizations in response to such a major exogenous event as the Covid-19 pandemic? How can the Covid-19 pandemic be best conceptualized in terms of its impact on intergovernmental organizations? We show that the responses of intergovernmental organizations to the Covid-19 pandemic had two important features: (a) intergovernmental organizations responded in a synchronized way, and (b) the pandemic triggered wide-spread non-major adaptations to the changed environment, providing opportunities for legitimation work and minor repackaging of existing activities, but has not led to noticeable transformational change in organizations’ activities. We argue that the observed intergovernmental organization’s responses can be explained partly from rational-choice perspective and partly from sociological institutionalist perspective. Given our data, we argue that the pandemic can be conceptualized as an uncertainty shock, in terms of its impact on intergovernmental organizations.
In national policymaking speakers commonly refer to models and policies adopted elsewhere as a means to justify a bill. However, empirical analysis of parliamentary talk in eight national parliaments (Argentina, Canada, Chile, Finland, Mexico, Russia, Spain and the USA) reported in this article showed an interesting relationship between two types of justifications: of the eight countries compared, the ones that rank lowest in references to the international community as means to justify or criticize domestic legislation rank highest in the frequency with which national self-image is evoked. Yet these two types of justification exist in the same debates, because the occurrence of both of these discourses correlates with debate length. The variation is due to differences between political cultures: in countries like Argentina and the USA, where national self-image is employed most frequently, speakers have at their disposal stories that bolster beliefs about the country’s uniqueness. In contrast, in the parliaments of Canada and Finland, where references to national self-image are most infrequent, references to the country’s history are rare, and talk about national self-image is entwined with international references.
This article examines how government actors of a nation-state cope with coercion exerted on them by an external source and how they evolve justifications and persuasive arguments when debating and reporting new policies in a setting that threatens to compromise national sovereignty and integrity. We approach the question by analysing two diverse political arenas: parliamentary debates and public accounts by political leaders in the media during the intervention by the Troika in Portugal. The study evidences a variation in strategies to manage coercion: the politicians use both depoliticization and relativization. While discourses of depoliticization are frequent in media, in parliamentary debates the predominant strategy is to emphasize the aspect of agency by relativizing the power of the Troika. Both strategies serve to portray responsibility in the face of external intervention, but in different discursive environments political actors use different rhetorical tools to work on their institutional appearance and legitimacy.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.