Recent years have witnessed a surge in support for populist and antiglobalization candidates in myriad countries including Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, India, Italy, the Philippines, and the United States. Such candidates often explicitly target international organizations (IOs) in their rhetoric, framing IOs as opaque, undemocratic, and ineffective institutions run by globalists and lifelong bureaucrats. Yet there is scant evidence of worsening public attitudes toward prominent IOs like the United Nations, World Trade Organization, and International Monetary Fund. This paradox raises the question: how does elite communication affect public attitudes towards international cooperation?

In Legitimacy Politics, Lisa Dellmuth and Jonas Tallberg offer the most comprehensive study to date of whether, why, and when elite communication shapes the popular legitimacy of IOs. Their argument builds on important research in international relations on public attitudes toward IOs as well as pioneering work on political behavior in American and comparative politics—much of which applies insights from cognitive psychology. The authors argue that elite cues serve as heuristics, or cognitive shortcuts, for ordinary citizens who lack the information and political awareness necessary to independently assess international institutions.

They further