Populist elite cues and public attitudes toward international organizations: Experimental evidence from South Korea on the UN human rights bodies

How do domestic elite cues shape public attitudes toward international organizations (IOs)? Political elites with populist rhetoric frequently criticize IOs on grounds of representation, popular sovereignty, elitism, detachment from local concerns, and a uniform approach to global problems without accounting for local nuances. We argue that discursive delegitimization by domestic populist elites negatively influences public perceptions of IOs. We conducted an original survey experiment in South Korea, focusing on changes in public attitudes toward the Committee against Torture, one of the core UN human rights treaty bodies. The findings confirm that individuals exposed to populist delegitimizing cues exhibited increased skepticism regarding the performance of IOs and decreased willingness to adhere to their recommendations. We also found that this effect is observed across individuals with different ideological orientations, suggesting that populist rhetoric exerts a broader influence than previously assumed.