“The UN is not perfect, but…” - IO staffs’ practices and perceptions of internal self-legitimation

Most analyses of legitimation practices of international organizations (IOs) focus on the legitimacy claims IOs direct at their external audience(s). However, IOs also need to legitimize their actions internally to maintain organizational cohesion. While previous research has primarily looked at the internal self-legitimation activities of IO leadership, this paper focuses on the practices and perceptions of ‘ordinary’ staff members. Regarding IO employees’ practices, it argues that a broader understanding of internal self-legitimation is needed, which includes both whitewashing and criticism as part of IO staffs’ attempts to cope with the internal contradictions in their organization. By drawing on a case study of the UN Secretariat and in-depth interviews with UN staff, it demonstrates that identity incoherence in IOs does not only lead to practices of glossing over, but also to practices of critique at the individual level. With regard to IO employees’ perceptions of self-legitimation activities by leadership, the paper further argues that these activities do not automatically produce the intended outcome. The way IO employees perceive leadership’s self-legitimation practices is critical to their ‘success’: If they regard them as purely tactical measures to hypocritically cover up existing problems, these practices can even increase staff dissatisfaction. In the case of the UN Secretariat, many staff members criticize internal speeches and documents as ‘Orwellian’, reject certain ‘success stories’ as hypocritical, and dismiss town hall meetings and other ‘dialogue initiatives’ as mere fig leaves. By shedding light on the contested nature of internal self-legitimation, this paper not only offers an innovative perspective for analyzing IOs ‘as organizations’, but also identifies a new direction for studying the internal (dys)functionalities of these unique actors in world politics.