Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900–1941

Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900–1941. By John C.G. Röhl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp.1562, AU$97.95 (cloth).     

Legitimacy Deficits of International Organizations: design,drift, and decoupling at the UN Security Council

Despite ubiquitous calls for their reform, international organizations (IOs) often suffer from legitimacy deficits. What explains the emergence of legitimacy deficits and what effects do they produce? This article discusses the gradual emergence of legitimacy deficits through the concept of legitimacy drift. Legitimacy drift occurs when an organization loses legitimacy by failing to adapt itself to a changing environment. It identifies three sources of legitimacy drift: failure to live up to pre-existing standards (broken promises), changes in the standards of legitimacy by which organizations are assessed (shifting standards), and changes in an organization’s relevant public (audience shift). Legitimacy deficits typically prompt organizational responses. These include attempts at re-legitimation through institutional reform and operational adaptation, but also other ‘coping mechanisms’ such as promises of reform, the logic of confidence, and decoupling. Coping mechanisms are especially important where reform is blocked. This model is illustrated by the history of the United Nations Security Council, one of the oldest and most powerful IOs. A conclusion calls for bridging historical and sociological institutionalism to better understand IO legitimacy in time.     

Measuring Precedent in a Judicial Hierarchy

Identifying the U.S. Supreme Court's most influential precedents is integral to understanding its impact on society. To make these identifications, scholars often analyze the network of citations in Supreme Court opinions. I contend that the broader jurisprudential significance of precedent can be better captured by considering how frequently a precedent is followed across the federal judicial hierarchy. In support of this contention, I present an analysis of original data on the treatment of every Court precedent 1946–2010 in all three levels of the federal judicial hierarchy. I show that a class of complex and ambiguous precedents are followed significantly less at all levels of the hierarchy. Yet these same fractious precedents exhibit high citation rates in Supreme Court opinions. The results show that different methodological choices capture strikingly different theoretical concepts, ones that are easily conflated in the study of legal precedent.