Hollow multilateralism: How autocracies contest internet norms and procedures of international organizations

International relations scholars assume that multilateralism is a key component of the liberal international order. However, counterintuitively, autocracies are increasingly promoting international norms and intergovernmentalism. We argue that this type of multilateralism is hollow, because it serves the sole purpose of legitimizing national illiberal and autocratic practices. It is hollow substantively, because international norms function as a legitimation of autocratic policies. It is also hollow procedurally, because a push for democratizing global governance is a fig leaf for one-country-one-vote principles. We identify a number of cases where we expect instances of hollow multilateralism to occur, i.e., where we expect variation in commitments between countries over time. Within those cases, we collect and code speeches and statements in international organizations. To analyze substantive hollow multilateralism, we are interested in the degree of commitment of policy output, ranging from deep norm commitment to shallow norm recognition. To analyze procedural hollow multilateralism, we are interested in references to decision-making procedures, such as one-country-one-vote principles or the role of civil society. We combine this data with country-level data on the independent variable (regime type) and control variables (e.g., economic growth). This allows us to uncover the shifts in commitment to norms and procedures over time between regime types.