What effects do international crises have on the public legitimacy of International Organizations (IOs)? Deviating from previous research, we argue that such crises make those international organizations more salient that are mandated to solve the respective crisis. This results in two main effects. First, the public legitimacy of those IOs becomes more dependent on citizens’ crisis-induced worries, leading to a more positive view of those IOs. Second, as the higher salience also leads to higher levels of elite communication regarding IOs, elite blaming of the IOs during crises results in direct negative effects on public legitimacy beliefs on IOs. Finally, both the valence and content of the elite discourse additionally moderate the positive effects of crisis-induced worries. Implementing survey experiments on public legitimacy beliefs on the WHO during the COVID-19 crisis with about 4400 respondents in Austria, Germany and Turkey, we find preliminary evidence for the expectations derived from our salience argument. In the conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for future research on IO legitimacy and IO legitimation.

国际危机对国际组织 (IO) 的公共合法性有何影响？与之前的研究不同，我们认为此类危机使那些被授权解决相应危机的国际组织更加突出。这导致两个主要影响。首先，这些 IO 的公共合法性变得更加依赖于公民对危机引发的担忧，从而导致对这些 IO 的看法更加积极。其次，由于较高的显着性也导致精英在 IOs 方面的沟通水平更高，精英在危机期间对 IOs 的指责会直接对 IOs 的公共合法性信念产生负面影响。最后，精英话语的效价和内容还缓和了危机引发的担忧的积极影响。在 COVID-19 危机期间，对奥地利、德国和土耳其的约 4400 名受访者进行了关于 WHO 公众合法性信念的调查实验，我们发现了从我们的突出论点得出的预期的初步证据。在结论中，我们讨论了这些发现对未来关于 IO 合法性和 IO 合法性研究的影响。