Social cues
​how the liberal community legitimizes humanitarian war

This book advances a theory of social cues to explain how international institutions legitimize foreign policy. It reframes legitimization as a type of identity politics. It argues that institutions, depending on the identities they represent, confer legitimacy by sending social cues that exert social pressures to conform and induce relational concerns about norm abidance, group participation, and status and image. Applied to the domain of humanitarian wars, the argument implies that liberal democracies vis-à-vis NATO can influence citizens and policymakers within their community, the primary participants of these military operations. Historical case studies, news media, a survey of policymakers, and survey experiments conducted in multiple countries validate the social cues theory while refuting alternative arguments relating to legality, material burden sharing, Western regionalism, and information transmission. The book provides a fresh understanding of institutional legitimacy that challenges existing perspectives and contributes to broader debates about multilateralism, humanitarian intervention, and identity.

This monograph appears in the Cambridge University Press, Elements in International Relations series, and has been made open access, available here.



This manuscript contains materials from the following working papers

• ​Social Cues by International Organizations: NATO, the Security Council, and Public Support for Humanitarian Intervention Finklestein Paper Award recipient (International Organization Section, International Studies Association) [Paper]
• ​Information Transmission by International Organizations: A Reassessment [Paper]