Intergovernmental Organizations and Public Opinion: The Case of Migration Policy

• In Event: International Organization, Human Rights, and Migration Policy

Abstract

When, and under what conditions, do Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) like the United Nations 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, IGO officials 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 in a number of different ways. Using migration policy as a case study, this paper examines variation in the ways in which prominent IGOs communicate with the public. It considers the IGOs that have an obvious stake in debates about migration policy—e.g., the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM)—as well as others like the World Bank or the World Health Organization (WHO) whose connections to migration policy are less obvious. By examining their recent patterns of public communications concerning migration, this paper tests two separate (but not mutually-exclusive) explanations for why IGOs might choose to engage directly with the public. The first is a state-driven explanation—namely, that certain member states put pressure on IGOs to engage with the public in order to advance their own policy agenda. The second is a more IGO-driven explanation that posits that the IGOs themselves choose to engage with the public as part of a strategy to put pressure on member state governments. Preliminary results, based on interviews with IGO personnel and an analysis of the IGOs' public communications, indicate stronger support for the second hypothesis.

Author

• Brian D. Greenhill, SUNY, University at Albany