(cc) European Union 2016, via Flickr.

When the United States steps back from international institutions related to climate, global health, security, or other priorities, it sends shockwaves through the system. Under Donald Trump, the U.S. has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement and moved to pull out of the World Health Organization. More recently, Trump has renewed his attacks on NATO, warning that the 77-year-old security alliance faces a “very bad” future, after NATO partners appeared unwilling to help U.S. forces reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Elsewhere, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has defied European Union rules on migration and rule of law, and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rolled back environmental cooperation and protections in the Amazon. With populist leaders across Europe and the Americas echoing similar skepticism, many fear global cooperation is unraveling.

And yet, international organizations have largely persisted through this turbulent period. We argue they are doing so by adjusting their operations – and in the process, international organizations are also reshaping the rules of global governance.

Why haven’t global institutions collapsed?

The conventional story about global governance in an era of populist resistance is straightforward: Populist leaders are damaging international institutions, and global cooperation is in decline.

But that story misses important nuances. International organizations are not simply victims of the populist backlash. They are adapting, and in doing so, they are quietly transforming the nature of global governance itself.

In our new book, Global Governance Under Fire, we show that these institutions tend to respond in two main ways: by appeasing populist leaders or by working around them. Both strategies help institutions survive. But both also carry long-term costs.

The result is a paradox: Global institutions may endure the populist era – but in a weaker, more fragmented form.

What makes today’s populist challenge different

Skepticism toward international cooperation is not new. But today’s populist wave is different in both scope and strategy.

Earlier critics of globalization typically targeted specific policies like global trade agreements, financial rules, or development programs. Today’s populists often reject the legitimacy of international institutions altogether, portraying these organizations as run by unaccountable elites that infringe on national sovereignty. And unlike earlier movements, today’s populists govern some of the most powerful countries in the international system.

Indeed, leaders such as Trump, Orbán, Bolsonaro, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni have used executive authority to reshape how their countries engage with international institutions. They have withdrawn from agreements, blocked institutional decision-making, cut funding, and replaced technocrats with loyalists.

They have also used rhetoric to erode public trust, portraying international organizations as distant, elitist, and out of touch. Research shows that these types of elite cues can significantly shape how citizens view global institutions.

This combination – ideological hostility plus governing power – makes populism a uniquely disruptive force for global cooperation.

How international organizations respond

So what do international organizations do in response? They do not simply absorb these shocks. They instead adapt, and often in ways that are not immediately visible.

Our research shows that they rely on two broad strategies: appeasement and sidelining.

‣ Appeasement: keeping populists inside the tent

One option is to make concessions to populist governments to preserve cooperation. We see this across multiple institutions.

The European Union, for example, has struggled to enforce its own democratic standards in Hungary, even as Orbán has repeatedly violated E.U. norms without major penalties. Instead, the E.U. has often compromised, particularly on migration, shifting policy toward stricter border controls that align more closely with Orbán’s preferences.

The World Bank has also adjusted its priorities during periods of U.S. pressure. World Bank leaders during the current Trump administration have faced external criticism for downplaying climate change, for example. And NATO members have repeatedly increased defense spending in response to Trump’s threats to withdraw from the alliance.

Such appeasement can work in the sense that it keeps powerful members engaged. But it comes at a cost. Over time, institutions may dilute their core missions, lose autonomy, and appear less neutral. For example, the E.U.’s repeated compromises with Hungary have helped keep Budapest inside the bloc, but at the cost of weakening enforcement of its own rule-of-law standards — raising concerns that the E.U. is selectively applying its foundational principles.

In short, international organizations survive – but in a compromised form.

‣ Sidelining: working around populist obstruction

The second strategy is to reduce reliance on populist governments altogether. This approach allows institutions to keep functioning even when key members are obstructive.

For example, when the Trump administration cut funding to the World Health Organization, other governments, like China, and private foundations stepped in to fill the gap. In climate governance, international institutions have increasingly worked with cities and states, firms, and civil society groups – a shift that has accelerated as national governments have pulled back from climate commitments. And in global trade, countries created an alternative dispute resolution mechanism after the United States blocked appointments to the World Trade Organization appellate body; research suggests it has been quite successful.

These workarounds help preserve cooperation. But they also change how global governance operates. Decision-making becomes less inclusive, authority becomes more fragmented, and cooperation increasingly takes place among smaller groups of like-minded countries and organizations. For example, Giorgia Meloni’s plan to process asylum seekers in Albania has exposed sharp divisions within the E.U., with some leaders praising the approach while courts, NGOs, and other governments challenge its legality and humanitarian implications. This case highlights how migration policy is increasingly shaped by contested, uneven coalitions rather than unified E.U. action. 

Why this matters

These adaptations raise a deeper question: What kind of global governance system is emerging?

Appeasement and sidelining can help institutions cope with populist pressure. But neither approach fully solves the underlying problem. Instead, new trade-offs emerge. Appeasement preserves participation but weakens institutional principles. Sidelining preserves functionality but reduces an organization’s legitimacy and inclusiveness.

Over time, this can produce a system that is more transactional than rule-based, more fragmented than universal, and more vulnerable to geopolitical competition. We are already seeing these dynamics play out. As Western-led institutions struggle with internal divisions, other powers, and particularly China, have expanded their influence within global governance institutions. China over the past decade has also sponsored the creation of new global institutions.

In this environment, the danger is not that institutions will collapse. Rather, it is that they persist in name while becoming less capable of solving global problems from climate change to pandemics.

The bottom line

Populism is not just challenging global governance; it is reshaping it.

International organizations are adapting in ways that allow them to survive. But those adaptations are changing what these institutions are, how they operate, and what they can achieve.

The key question is no longer whether global cooperation will endure. It is whether it can endure without losing the very qualities – legitimacy, inclusiveness, and effectiveness – that made it valuable in the first place.

Richard Clark is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, specializing in international cooperation and political economy. He and Allison Carnegie are the authors of Global Governance Under Fire: How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave (Princeton University Press, 2026). His first book, Cooperative Complexity: The Next Level of Global Economic Governance, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. 

Allison Carnegie is a professor of political science at Columbia University, where she specializes in global governance and international institutions, with a focus on populism, trade, foreign aid, and emerging technologies. She is also the co-author (with Austin Carson) of Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and author of Power Plays: How International Institutions Reshape Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

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