Does Regime Type Shape IIGOs? Examining the Link Between Democratic Membership and IIGO Actorness in Global Governance

This study aims to assess the symbiotic relation between regime type and IIGO actorness and agency in global governance. Whether the rise of informality in every sphere of the international system is a consequence of the authoritarian and illiberal turn of world politics or not also needs to be examined from both theoretical and empirical lenses. This research seeks to remedy this lacunae in the IOs literature in general and IIGOs literature, in particular by focusing on most specifically how the regime type of IIGOs members affects these institutions’ actorness in 1) issue/sectoral areas (security, economic, social, political); 2) geographical diversity and 3) norm diffusion. In doing so, we construct a novel index, Democracy Index of IIGOs (hereafter D-IIGOs) and test three hypotheses based on the index. The main hypothesis of our research investigates whether the actorness of democratic IIGOs (both strongly and moderately democratic-leaning IIGOs) in global governance is stronger or not compared to hybrid IIGOs (which have an equal mix of democratic and authoritarian members) and authoritarian IIGOs (both strongly and moderately authoritarian).