The Legitimacy of IO Resilience: An Experimental Study of Public Preferences for Resistance and Adaptation

What do citizens expect from international organizations (IOs) when crises unfold? Moments of crisis heighten the visibility of IO authority and prompt contestation over their role. Existing scholarship on IO legitimacy highlights effectiveness, delegation, and institutional authority as key drivers of support, but it has largely examined relatively static institutional attributes rather than on the choices IOs make under acute pressure. In contrast, the crisis management literature emphasizes that flexibility and adaptation are vital for effective problem-solving, even as other research cautions that departures from established routines may undermine public confidence. This project brings these strands together to examine how citizens evaluate IOs in times of crisis. We argue that the public distinguishes between two broad response strategies--resistance (rule-bound continuity) and adaptation (rule-revising change)--and that their legitimacy depends on crisis type. Adaptation is expected to be rewarded in exogenous crises, while resistance is likely to be valued in endogenous crises. We further contend that procedural features moderate these effects, with efficiency reinforcing resistance and inclusiveness strengthening adaptation. To test these claims, we field a vignette experiment that systematically varies response strategy, crisis type, and procedural features across four countries. To our knowledge, this study will provide the first experimental evidence on how the public evaluates the trade-off between stability and flexibility in IO crisis governance, advancing research on legitimacy and resilience in global governance.