A house divided: Feminist and conservative NGOs’ legitimacy beliefs about the United Nations

Cupać, Jelena; Heidenreich, Tobias Article — Published Version A house divided: Feminist and conservative NGOs’ legitimacy beliefs about the United Nations Review of International Studies Provided in Cooperation with: WZB Berlin Social Science Center Suggested Citation: Cupać, Jelena; Heidenreich, Tobias (2025) : A house divided: Feminist and conservative NGOs’ legitimacy beliefs about the United Nations, Review of International Studies, ISSN 1469-9044, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Iss. FirstView, pp. 1-25, https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/330709 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Review of International Studies (2025), page 1 of 25 doi:10.1017/S026021052510137X RESEARCH ARTICLE A house divided: Feminist and conservative NGOs’ legitimacy beliefs about the United Nations Jelena Cupać and Tobias Heidenreich WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Global Governance, Berlin, Germany Corresponding author: Jelena Cupać; Email: [email protected] (Received 24 June 2024; revised 10 July 2025; accepted 11 August 2025) Abstract Within the UN, there is a divide between NGO networks with differing stances on gender equality and women’s rights. Feminist and feminist-informed NGOs push for extensive women’s rights, including reproductive rights and protection against discrimination. In contrast, conservative NGOs uphold traditional gender roles and family structures, strongly opposing reproductive rights like abortion. Studies have examined these NGOs’ stances and advocacy tactics, but a detailed comparative analysis of their views of the UN – their key battleground – is missing. The paper addresses this gap by assessing how each group evaluates the UN’s legitimacy and identifying the underlying sources of legitimacy beliefs. By combining computational and qualitative text analysis, it reveals several trends: the UN is central in the discourse of both groups of NGOs, although it appears more in feminist NGOs’ communications, and feminist groups generally evaluate the UN’s legitimacy more positively. This positivity peaks when the UN actively supports feminist objectives and collaborates with these NGOs. Conservative NGOs, on the other hand, positively evaluate the UN when they can align the UN’s foundational texts with their views and when they garner support from conservative states. Their most negative evaluations occur when they believe the UN uses deception to promote progressive policies. Keywords: backlash; conservative; feminist; legitimacy; NGO; UN Introduction The start of Donald Trump’s second term as US president signalled a new and more dangerous phase of global democratic decline and the unravelling of the liberal international order. It continues an entrenched pattern where authoritarian, populist, and conservative religious actors mount a backlash against what they see as the elitist and intrusive core of the global liberal agenda.1Gender equality and women’s rights have been key targets of this backlash. The attacks have occurred not only at regional and national levels, as seen in the EU and the United States, but also increasingly on 1Karen J. Alter and Michael Zürn, ‘Conceptualising backlash politics: Introduction to a special issue on backlash politics in comparison’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 22:4 (2020), pp. 563–84; Karen J. Alter and Michael Zürn, ‘Theorising backlash politics: Conclusion to a special issue on backlash politics in comparison’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 22:4 (2020), pp. 739–52; Wayne Sandholtz, Yuxin Bei, and Kayla Caldwell, ‘Backlash and international human rights courts: Crisis, accountability, and opportunity’, in Laurence R. Helfer (ed.), Contracting Human Rights (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018), pp. 159–78; Mikael Rask Madsen, Piotr Cebulak, and Micha Wiebusch, ‘Backlash against international courts: Explaining the forms and patterns of resistance to international courts’, International Journal of Law in Context, 14:2 (2018), pp. 197–220. © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The British International Studies Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press 2 Jelena Cupać and Tobias Heidenreich the global stage, within the United Nations.2Leading this effort are conservative religious NGOs, primarily from the United States and Western Europe – notably the Heritage Foundation, whose Project 2025 is widely seen as the blueprint for Trump’s second administration. Alongside alliances with certain post-Soviet, Islamic, and postcolonial states – as well as the United States underTrump – these organisations have invested substantial resources into reshaping the UN’s normative framework.3Despite differences, they are united in resisting ‘gender ideology’ and promoting traditional values, particularly the notion of ‘the natural family’.4Their efforts have yielded results, such as introducing ‘family rights’ language into several Human Rights Council resolutions and removing references to sexual and reproductive health from Security Council Resolution 2467 on women, peace, and security in 2019.5 The rise of the conservative religious bloc within the UN has significantly challenged feminist and feminist-informed NGOs. While feminism at the UN has always been diverse and internally contested, ideological differences have not prevented feminists from seizing opportunities and shaping the UN’s agenda. Since its early days, feminists have influenced key UN institutions and policies, from establishing the Commission on the Status of Women to advancing the term ‘gender’ at the 1995 Beijing Conference and drafting Resolution 1325 on women in conflict. These efforts have fostered a sense of feminist ownership over the UN and, although much remains to be done, have helped establish it as a central platform for advancing gender equality and women’s rights globally. Any rollback would threaten these achievements and undermine decades of advocacy. While feminist and feminist-informed NGOs within the UN do not yet constitute a unified feminist front, they are part of a broader resistance network against the growing influence of anti-gender forces.6 As a result, the UN has become a battleground for two opposing NGO networks with radically different views on gender equality and women’s rights: feminist and feminist-informed NGOs, who advocate for comprehensive gender equality – including reproductive autonomy and protection from discrimination and violence – and conservative NGOs, who promote traditional gender roles and strongly oppose reproductive rights, particularly abortion. Multiple studies have already documented this new normative and advocacy dynamic. They also draw on multiple strands of literature, ranging from norms and international organisations (IO) politicisation research in International Relations (IR) to social movement studies in political science and sociology. Earlier studies have been mostly empirical, identifying key conservative actors and mapping their organisational strategies, coordination efforts, and the spaces where they mobilised.7More recent scholarship has placed greater emphasis on conceptualisation. Sanders introduces the concept of norm spoiling, describing how conservative actors actively work to 2Jelena Cupać and Irem Ebetürk, ‘The personal is global political: The antifeminist backlash in the United Nations’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 22:4 (2020), pp. 702–14; Jelena Cupać and Irem Ebetürk, ‘Backlash advocacy and NGO polarization over women’s rights in the United Nations’, International Affairs, 97:4 (2021), pp. 1183–201; Agnieszka Graff and Elżbieta Korolczuk, Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment (Routledge, 2022); Roman Kuhar and David Paternotte (eds), Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017); Eszter Kováts, ‘The emergence of powerful anti-gender movements in Europe and the crisis of liberal democracy’, in Michaela Köttig, Renate Bitzan, and Andrea Petö (eds), Gender and Far-Right Politics in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 175–89. 3Rebecca Sanders, ‘Norm spoiling: Undermining the international women’s rights agenda’, International Affairs, 94:2 (2018), pp. 271–91; Jelena Cupać and Irem Ebetürk, ‘Competitive mimicry: The socialization of antifeminist NGOs into the United Nations’, Global Constitutionalism, 11:3 (2022), pp. 379–400. 4Doris Buss and Didi Herman, Globalizing Family Values: The Christian Right in International Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 2003). 5Jessica Sapiano and Nupur S. Raghuvanshi, ‘Making for “strange bedfellows”: the Women, Peace and Security agenda after UNSCRs 2467 and 2493’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 26:3 (2024), pp. 680–703. 6Rebecca Holmes, Feminist Responses to ‘Norm-Spoiling’ at the United Nations (Overseas Development Institute, 2024); Rebecca Holmes, Feminist Responses to the Growing Anti-Rights Movement at the UN (The Global Observatory, 2024). 7Clifford Bob, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Louise Chappell, ‘Contesting women’s rights: Charting the emergence of a transnational conservative counter-network’, Global Society, 20:4 (2006), pp. 491–520; Buss and Herman, Globalizing Family Values. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press Review of International Studies 3 delegitimise established international norms on women’s rights by portraying them as ideological impositions or threats to national sovereignty.8Counter-norming, as developed by Roggeband, explains how these actors do not merely oppose existing norms but actively construct and promote alternative frameworks rooted in traditional, nationalist, or religious values.9Voss conceptualises norm contestation as the process through which conservative NGOs engage in struggles over the interpretation and application of gender norms.10 Finally, backlash advocacy, as explored by Cupać and Ebetürk, captures the broader mobilisation efforts of conservative NGOs to roll back feminist gains, while employing legal, political, and institutional strategies to entrench conservative agendas at the UN.11 However, with few exceptions, existing research has devoted little attention to comparing feminist and feminist-informed NGOs with conservative NGOs.12 Beyond comparing aspects such as their networks and modes of institutional engagement, one important dimension – examined in this paper – is how these NGOs perceive the UN, a key arena for their normative conflicts. This comparative angle follows from IR literature on the legitimacy and authority of IOs. Legitimacy perceptions shape how actors engage with IOs, influencing whether they support, contest, or disengage from them. If, for example, feminist NGOs view the UN as a progressive actor, they may seek deeper cooperation, whereas if they see it as unresponsive or co-opted by conservative forces, they might seek alternative venues for action. At the same time, legitimacy perceptions influence the UN’s effectiveness in a given issue area by defining the conditions for its ability to establish norms and enforce compliance. This is evident, for example, in the case of feminist actors within the UN not daring to organise the Fifth World Conference on Women, often attributed to fears that ideological polarisation would cause setbacks rather than progress in women’s rights. However, beyond analysing the implications of feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs’ legitimacy perceptions and assessments of the UN, it is equally important to examine the underlying beliefs that shape these perceptions. Understanding these beliefs not only clarifies whether these NGOs view the UN as more or less legitimate but also reveals the reasons behind their perspectives. This approach enables a deeper analysis of the political, institutional, and normative dynamics influencing NGO–UN relations – without the immediate pressure of establishing causal links between perception and action. Nonetheless, future research can build on this foundation to explore how legitimacy perceptions shape NGO strategies and the UN’s responses amid ideological polarisation. Against this background, this paper asks: Under what circumstances, and based on which legitimacy beliefs, are feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs inclined to evaluate the UN along a spectrum from more positive to more negative? To answer this question, we proceed in five steps. First, we delve into the theory of IO legitimacy, particularly its interplay with (1) IO authority, (2) the audience’s legitimacy evaluations, and (3) the beliefs shaping them. We argue that legitimacy evaluations consist of an audience’s assessments – ranging on a continuum from more positive to more negative – of whether an IO exercises its authority within a given domain appropriately. These evaluations, we posit, stem from prior ideas, norms, and values – what we term sources of legitimacy beliefs. We then apply these theoretical propositions to analyse how feminist, feminist-informed NGOs, and conservative NGOs perceive the UN. We first show that both groups recognise the UN’s authority. Then, using automated text analysis – semantic role labelling and sentiment analysis on 23,747 NGO documents – we examine their legitimacy evaluations of the UN over time. Plotting these reveals when the NGOs viewed the UN most positively and most negatively. Finally, we qualitatively analyse sixty sampled documents from these inflection points to infer the sources of legitimacy beliefs shaping their evaluations. 8Sanders, ‘Norm spoiling’. 9Conny Roggeband, International Women’s Rights: Progress Under Attack?, Working Paper Series No. 26 (Berlin Potsdam Research Group ‘The International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?’, 2019). 10M. J. Voss, ‘Contesting “family” at the United Nations Human Rights Council’, Religion & Human Rights, 14:2 (2019), pp. 95–133. 11Cupać and Ebetürk, ‘Antifeminist backlash in the UN’; Cupać and Ebetürk, ‘Backlash advocacy and NGO polarization’. 12Cupać and Ebetürk, ‘Backlash advocacy and NGO polarization’; Cupać and Ebetürk, ‘Competitive mimicry’. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press 4 Jelena Cupać and Tobias Heidenreich Our findings show that while the UN is central to feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs, it features more prominently in feminist communication. These NGOs consistently view the UN more positively, particularly when it champions feminist causes (IO performance and ideology as a source of legitimacy beliefs) and fosters institutional access (IO procedure as a source of legitimacy beliefs). Conservative NGOs evaluate the UN most positively when promoting an ‘originalist’ interpretation of its founding documents – an overlooked legitimacy source tied to ownership over an IO’s normative outputs. This finding is particularly striking, as it diverges from established sources of legitimacy beliefs in the literature. Instead, it suggests an overlooked dimension: legitimacy perceptions rooted in a sense of ownership over an IO’s normative outputs. This insight opens a promising avenue for further research, including comparisons with feminist claims of ownership over the UN. Conservative NGOs also rate the UN highly when allied with conservative states (IO procedure as a source of legitimacy beliefs) but most negatively when perceiving UN agencies as advancing a progressive agenda through misleading methods (IO procedure as a source of legitimacy beliefs). The paper contributes to two strands of literature – IO legitimacy and the global anti-feminist backlash – which intersect as backlash studies draw from multiple scholarly traditions. It makes three key contributions. First, it shows that in polarised settings, legitimacy perceptions are also shaped by oppositional dynamics. Conservative NGO influence leads feminists to view the UN less positively, making it vulnerable to contestation from both liberal and illiberal forces, thus complicating simple distinctions between supporters and challengers of the tenets of the liberal international order. Second, it introduces normative ownership as a potential new source of legitimacy, showing that conservatives, while rejecting the UN’s liberal framework, seek to claim ideological and historical stakes in the institution rather than abandon it. Third, it challenges the view of illiberal backlash as purely reactionary by highlighting conservative norm-building. Further research should explore these areas and the link between legitimacy, NGO actions, and UN responses. Legitimacy as a lens for analysing perceptions of international organisations IO authority and legitimacy evaluations IO legitimacy has long been a theme in IR, but it has only recently garnered more focused attention from scholars in the field.13 The trend has also been accompanied by a more extensive empirical analysis of the phenomenon.14 Following the sociological definition of IO legitimacy proposed by Jonas Tallberg and Michael Zürn, a definition that has recently come into the spotlight and been 13Steven Bernstein, ‘Legitimacy in intergovernmental and non-state global governance’, Review of International Political Economy, 18:1 (2011), pp. 17–51; James Brassett and Eleni Tsingou, ‘The politics of legitimate global governance’, Review of International Political Economy, 18:1 (2011), pp. 1–16; Lisa Maria Dellmuth and Jonas Tallberg, ‘The social legitimacy of international organizations: Interest representation, institutional performance, and confidence extrapolation in the United Nations’, Review of International Studies, 41:3 (2015), pp. 451–75; Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt, ‘Cosmopolitan politicization: How perceptions of interdependence foster citizens’ expectations in international institutions’, European Journal of International Relations, 18:3 (2012), pp. 481–508; Ian Hurd, ‘Legitimacy and authority in international politics’, International Organization, 53:2 (1999), pp. 379–408; Ian Hurd, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council (Princeton University Press, 2007); Jonas Tallberg and Michael Zürn, ‘The legitimacy and legitimation of international organizations: Introduction and framework’, The Review of International Organizations, 14 (2019), pp. 581–606; Erik Voeten, ‘Public opinion and the legitimacy of international courts’, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 14:2 (2013), pp. 411–36; Dominik Zaum, Legitimating International Organizations (Oxford University Press, 2013). 14Brigitte Anderson, Thomas Bernauer, and Alexander Kachi, ‘Does international pooling of authority affect the perceived legitimacy of global governance?’, The Review of International Organizations, 14 (2019), pp. 661–83; Martin Binder and Monika Heupel, ‘The legitimacy of the UN Security Council: Evidence from recent General Assembly debates’, International Studies Quarterly, 59:2 (2015), pp. 238–50; Tana Johnson, ‘Guilt by association: The link between states’ influence and the legitimacy of intergovernmental organizations’, Review of International Organizations, 6:1 (2011), pp. 57–84; Pippa Norris, ‘Confidence in the United Nations: Cosmopolitan and nationalistic attitudes’, in Yilmaz Esmer and Thorleif Pettersson (eds), The International System, Democracy, and Values (Uppsala University Press, 2009), pp. 17–48; Christoph Rauh and Michael Zürn, ‘Authority, politicization, and alternative justifications: Endogenous legitimation dynamics in global economic https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press Review of International Studies 5 widely adopted, we characterise legitimacy as ‘beliefs within a given constituency or other relevant audience that a political institution’s exercise of authority is appropriate’.15 This definition stands out for not only making IO legitimacy dependent on organisational authority but also the unique way in which it establishes this link: Authority is understood as the recognition of an organisation’s right to make norms, decisions, and interpretations within a particular social domain or issue area, while legitimacy concerns the audience’s evaluation of whether this right is exercised appropriately.16 To illustrate, consider the World Health Organization (WHO) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The audience might recognise the WHO as the leading authority on global public health. Yet, while some might support the WHO’s decisions, others could question their fairness, impartiality, or impact. Put differently, the WHO’s exercise of authority could be viewed positively by some and negatively by others. We refer to these assessments as legitimacy evaluations. Collectively, they contribute to an IO’s legitimacy, a phenomenon that is, therefore, best understood in relational terms rather than as an inherent IO characteristic. Legitimacy evaluations of an IO do not materialise in isolation; instead, they are rooted in distinct legitimacy beliefs originating from the socially constructed framework of ideas, norms, and values embraced by a specific audience, referred to as sources of legitimacy beliefs.17 When evaluating an IO, some may, therefore, prioritise democratic principles like openness, transparency, and accountability, while others may choose a neoliberal approach that favours efficiency and problemsolving.18 The sources of legitimacy beliefs a specific audience relies on when evaluating an IO are not fixed but vary over time and across contexts. They constitute an integral part of the dynamic politics of legitimation that surrounds IOs. In this context, IOs endeavour to secure approval from their audience by crafting legitimisation narratives that validate their authority, actions, and decisions. Simultaneously, the audience observes these actions and justifications, evaluating them against their own set of values, norms, ideas, and objectives.19 The sources of legitimacy beliefs are, therefore, a subject for empirical inquiry. They can be accessed by examining an audience’s legitimacy evaluations, communicated in written, spoken, or enacted forms (see Figure 1). In written and spoken form, these evaluations appear in an audience’s public statements across traditional and digital media, as well as on their websites. In an enacted form, an audience may express support or disapproval of IOs through actions such as collaborating with them as experts, participating in protests, or signing petitions. In this paper, we focus on feminist and conservative written communication. While this approach may sacrifice comprehensiveness, it is important to note that written communication still encodes spoken and enacted communication, such as when it refers to a particular speech, protest, or participation in IO spaces. Therefore, the study of written communication should enable us to gain a relatively robust understanding of the feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs’ evaluations of the UN and the legitimacy beliefs they are based on. Before discussing sources of legitimacy beliefs, a caveat is needed. Following Tallberg and Zürn, we classify feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs as part of the UN’s constituent audience – an audience that acknowledges its authority while also seeking to influence it.20 However, while their engagement and evaluations matter for the UN’s legitimacy, they are not the governance’, Review of International Political Economy, 27:3 (2020), pp. 583–611; Henning Schmidtke, ‘Elite legitimation and delegitimation of international organizations in the media: Patterns and explanations’, The Review of International Organizations, 14:4 (2019), pp. 633–59; Bernd Schlipphak, ‘Measuring attitudes toward regional organizations outside Europe’, Review of International Organizations, 10:3 (2015), pp. 351–75. 15Tallberg and Zürn, ‘Legitimacy and legitimation’, p. 585. 16Michael Zürn, Martin Binder, and Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt, ‘International authority and its politicization’, International Theory, 4:1 (2012), pp. 69–106 (pp. 82–8). 17Binder and Heupel, ‘Legitimacy of the UN Security Council’, p. 547; Hurd, ‘Legitimacy and authority’, p. 381. 18Anthony McGrew and David Held, Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Polity Press, 2002). 19Tallberg and Zürn, ‘Legitimacy and legitimation’, pp. 588–9. 20Tallberg and Zürn, ‘Legitimacy and legitimation’, p. 586. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press 6 Jelena Cupać and Tobias Heidenreich Figure 1. The relationship between legitimacy communication, legitimacy evaluations, and the sources of legitimacy beliefs. sole measure of it. IO legitimacy is a complex aggregate of multiple audiences and the IO’s own legitimisation efforts. Nevertheless, examining these NGOs’ legitimacy beliefs can offer insight into the boundaries within which the UN is expected to set gender equality norms and ensure adherence. Sources of legitimacy beliefs As previously noted, the beliefs shaping legitimacy evaluations of IOs can originate from diverse sources. Within this section, we delve into those most frequently referenced within the IO legitimacy, social movements, and international NGO literature: IO procedure, IO performance, the audience’s ideology, access to resources, and the boomerang effect.21 The literature generally treats these sources as distinct analytical categories. In reality, they often overlap. For instance, disentangling the ideologies of feminist and conservative NGOs from their assessments of the UN’s performance is not always a straightforward task, given that their ideologies typically inform these assessments. This intersection will be apparent in our empirical analysis. In this section, however, we address the sources of legitimacy beliefs as they are commonly described in the literature. Procedure as a source of IO legitimacy beliefs Max Weber was one of the first to highlight the importance of procedure in legitimacy, emphasising the proper administration of rules by authoritative figures through his concept of rational-legal authority.22 Nowadays, the concept is given renewed importance through an emphasis on democratic procedural standards such as access, representation, participation, transparency, legality, and impartiality. Against the background of their rising authority, IOs are increasingly expected to uphold these standards.23 Failing to do so opens the door for critics to question the validity of their actions and decisions, leading to negative evaluations of their legitimacy. Social movements criticising large economic IOs for being closed, opaque, and undemocratic are a case in point.24 The same applies to state and non-state critics who have highlighted the EU’s democracy deficit or the UN’s inability to accurately represent global power distribution. 21Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Cornell University Press, 1998). 22Max Weber, Economy and Society (University of California Press, 1978 [1922]). 23Matthew Paterson, ‘Legitimation and accumulation in climate change governance’, New Political Economy, 15:3 (2010), pp. 345–68; Binder and Heupel, ‘Legitimacy of the UN Security Council’. 24Gabrielle Marceau and Mary Hurley, ‘Transparency and public participation in the WTO: A report card on WTO transparency mechanisms’, Trade, Law & Development, 4 (2012), pp. 19–50. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press Review of International Studies 7 Performance as a source of IO legitimacy beliefs The link between performance and legitimacy is a widely recognised topic in the study of domestic political institutions. The premise is simple: if a government performs well, it will likely earn the trust and support of its citizens, but if it performs poorly, it will likely provoke distrust and criticism. Similarly, it is now widely recognised that IOs acquire a portion of their legitimacy by delivering collective benefits to states and societies. Research on IOs such as the UN, WTO, IMF, and EU shows that an IO’s perceived ability to address issues is key to shaping positive legitimacy evaluations across different audiences.25 Social movements protesting the mixed results of IMF adjustment programmes, and African governments opposing the International Criminal Court for its high prosecution rate of Africans, exemplify the negative relationship between organisational performance and legitimacy evaluations.26 Ideology as a source of IO legitimacy beliefs Liesbet Hooghe and colleagues highlight that legitimacy beliefs can also emerge from domestic contestation of IOs, driven by leftist and right-wing nationalist ideologies.27 Leftist views vary depending on the specific organisation and its policies. Some leftist groups oppose IOs they perceive as promoting capitalist economic policies, such as austerity measures and free trade agreements, which they argue harm workers and the poor. They may also criticise IOs they see as serving the interests of powerful countries and corporations. However, some leftist groups support IOs that promote social justice, human rights, and environmental protection, viewing them as instruments for advancing progressive goals and holding powerful actors accountable. As for right-wing and nationalist groups, they typically challenge IOs because they believe in promoting and protecting the interests, sovereignty, and independence of their nation above all else. They view IOs as threats to the autonomy of their nation and as forces that limit their ability to decide independently on issues such as immigration, trade, and security. They fear that IOs can dilute the power and influence of individual nations by pooling resources and decision-making authority. In their view, the important consequence of all these processes is the erosion of national identity and cultural heritage. Nationalists thus frequently point to the EU and the UN as IOs that interfere in domestic matters and erode sovereignty. Many also see NATO as an alliance that pressures nations into conflicts that do not serve their national interests. Sources of legitimacy beliefs specific to NGO participation in IOs: Access to resources and the boomerang effect Access to IOs alone can serve as a source of IO legitimacy beliefs among NGOs. However, the link between access and legitimacy becomes clearer when examining two key perspectives on NGO–IO relationships: the resource-based approach and the boomerang effect.28 The resource-based approach to IO–NGO relations holds that NGOs enter IOs to ensure their own survival. By engaging with non-state actors, IOs benefit from NGOs’ policy expertise, agenda-setting capabilities, policy implementation support, and role in monitoring rule compliance.29 For many NGOs, this 25Klaus Armingeon and Besir Ceka, ‘The loss of trust in the European Union during the Great Recession since 2007: The role of heuristics from the national political system’, European Union Politics, 15:1 (2014), pp. 82–107; Ecker-Ehrhardt, ‘Cosmopolitan politicization’; Dellmuth and Tallberg, ‘Social legitimacy of international organizations’. 26Jan Aart Scholte, ‘A more inclusive global governance? The IMF and civil society in Africa’, Global Governance, 18:2 (2012), pp. 185–206; Kamal M. Clarke, Abel S. Knottnerus, and Eefje De Volder (eds), Africa and the ICC: Perceptions of Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2016). 27Liesbet Hooghe, Tobias Lenz, and Gary Marks, ‘Contested world order: The delegitimation of international governance’, The Review of International Organizations, 14 (2019), pp. 731–43. 28Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. 29Jonas Tallberg, ‘Transnational access to international institutions: Three approaches’, in Christer Jönsson and Jonas Tallberg (eds), Transnational Actors in Global Governance: Patterns, Explanations and Implications (Springer, 2010), pp. 45–66; Jonas Tallberg, Theresa Sommerer, Thomas Squatrito, and Christer Jönsson, ‘Explaining the transnational design of international organizations’, International Organization, 68:4 (2014), pp. 741–74; Jens Steffek, ‘Explaining cooperation between IGOs and NGOs – push factors, pull factors, and the policy cycle’, Review of International Studies, 39:4 (2013), pp. 993–1013. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press 8 Jelena Cupać and Tobias Heidenreich creates an opportunity to exchange policy expertise for resources that many need to continue functioning. The more such resources are available, the more positively certain NGOs tend to evaluate an IO. Developed by Margaret Keck and Katheryn Sikkink, the boomerang effect stands as one of the most influential approaches in the study of the IO–NGO relationship.30 Sociologically rather than instrumentally inclined, the logic of the boomerang effect rests on the specific configuration of domestic and international opportunity structures. Simply put, it refers to a situation in which an NGO coming from a closed and potentially repressive domestic arena must seek allies at the international level if it wishes to achieve its aims. This strategy’s ultimate goal is to produce external pressure on the domestic arena, hence the use of the term boomerang. For certain NGOs, the existence of this opportunity structure will lead to a positive evaluation of an IO. Based on these theoretical propositions, we proceed to our empirical analysis. First, we examine how feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs view the UN’s authority on women’s rights and gender equality. Consistent with our definition of IO legitimacy, we posit that recognising this authority is a first step in shaping their legitimacy perceptions of the UN. In this section, we mostly rely on secondary literature. To explore under what circumstances and based on which legitimacy beliefs these NGOs evaluate the UN more positively or more negatively, we take two additional empirical steps: one based on automated text analysis and the other on qualitative examination of selected texts. Feminist and conservative NGOs’ perception of the UN’s authority Feminist NGOs and the UN’s authority Feminists have never represented a unified ideological bloc at the UN. According to Arat, they can be historically categorised into roughly seven broad groups.31 During the early Cold War, liberal feminists prioritised individual rights and sought gender equality through legal and institutional reforms, while Marxist feminists opposed this approach, arguing that capitalism was the root of women’s oppression. In the 1970s, radical feminists carved out space to argue that patriarchy was the primary system of oppression, whereas socialist feminists linked gender inequality primarily to class exploitation. In the 1980s and 1990s, women of colour and postcolonial feminists further challenged neoliberal policies by connecting them to global structures of power and privilege. They also criticised mainstream liberal feminism for its cultural imperialism and its tendency to overlook cultural differences and local contexts.32 These ideological debates ultimately paved the way for intersectional feminism in the 2000s, which analyses oppression through interconnected systems of race, class, gender, and other social hierarchies. Over the years, each of these feminist actors has left its mark on the UN’s gender equality and women’s rights norms and policies. Yet, their overarching framework remains largely grounded in liberal feminism – a recurring point of contention and critique within feminist circles.33 Nevertheless, the history of feminism at the UN is one of sustained engagement and meaningful influence. Following World War II, feminists pressured state delegations at the UN to secure recognition of ‘the equal rights of men and women’ in the UN Charter.34 Furthermore, in 1946, they helped establish the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the primary UN body promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. During the Cold War’s ideological divide, 30Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. 31Zehran F. K. Arat, ‘Feminisms, women’s rights, and the UN: Would achieving gender equality empower women?’, American Political Science Review, 109:4 (2015), pp. 674–89 (pp. 676–80). 32Engle, Karen and Nesiah, Vasuki, and Otto, Dianne L., ‘Feminist approaches to international law’, U of Texas Law, Public Law Research Paper, 716 (2021), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3820771 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn. 3820771. 33Arat, ‘Feminisms, women’s rights, and the UN’. 34Radhika Adami and Dan Plesch, Women and the UN: A New History of Women’s International Human Rights (Taylor & Francis, 2022). https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press Review of International Studies 15 words from Table 2, we find satisfactory levels of correlation on an aggregated level (r=0.77 for conservative NGOs and r=0.81 for feminist and feminist-informed NGOs), following the validation procedures implemented by earlier studies using LSS.51 In the results, higher scores signify greater positive sentiment toward the UN, while lower scores indicate a more negative perspective. Example sentences for each group of NGOs are listed in the lower part of Table 2. Analysis. In the following section, we present our analysis in three steps. First, we examine the UN’s visibility in the communication of feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs over time. Second, we present the sentiment expressed by these NGOs towards the UN over time, treating it as a proxy for their legitimacy evaluations. Third, we infer the primary sources of legitimacy beliefs underpinning these evaluations. To do so, we identify points in time depicting certain dynamics such as peaks, dips, or specific longer-lasting trends, and select exemplary documents for qualitative inspection. In total, a set of sixty documents was drawn based on the particular timeframe (for an overview, see Appendix) and distinct sentiment scores of single sentences within the documents. However, as many documents contain sentences with similar sentiment scores, our selection process was further influenced by the aggregated sentiment score at the document level. Additionally, we made sure to include documents crafted by various NGOs to ensure variation of sources, preventing this analytical step from being driven by a single NGO in our selection. Therefore, the resulting collection of documents showcases positive and negative communication of a diverse set of NGOs towards the UN during distinct time periods, communication that is instrumental in driving the dynamics observed in preceding steps. The analysis of the selected sixty documents eventually involved a thorough reading of each to establish two key aspects: firstly, the central subject or subjects of each document, such as the Millennium Development Goals, abortion, or a CSW meeting; and secondly, which legitimacy beliefs informed the document’s positive or negative evaluation of the topic and the UN, whether it was issues concerning performance, procedure, ideology, resources, or the boomerang effect. Results Visibility of the UN in feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs’ communication Examining the monthly communication of feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs reveals that the UN holds not only theoretical significance for them but also plays a vital role in their interactions with the public. Figure 2 shows that for feminist and feminist-informed NGOs (dashed line), during certain months, more than half of the documents published on their websites relate to the UN, mentioning it at least once. Importantly, the importance grows across the entire time frame with a less steep increase following 2016 and a plateau-like pattern following 2020. In contrast, conservative NGOs (solid line) are less concerned with the UN; visibility remains, for most of the time, at around 20 per cent. A closer look reveals that they are oftentimes more concerned with national issues. Although there is a noticeable spike in attention toward the UN in 2016, possibly influenced by Donald Trump’s rise to power, there is a general, gradual decline in visibility over time. However, considering the diverse range of actors and issues involved, the UN remains a crucial component of conservative NGOs’ communication. Feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs’ legitimacy evaluations of the UN (sentiment analysis) The two graphs presented in Figure 3 reveal a clear and compelling trend: feminist and feministinformed NGOs, over the period spanning from 2012 to 2021, on average and at every point in time, are more positive when addressing the UN as compared to their conservative counterparts. We interpret this to indicate a prevailing tendency among feminists to regard the UN as 51Tobias Heidenreich, Oliver Eisele, Kohei Watanabe, and Hajo G. Boomgaarden, ‘Exploring engagement with EU news on Facebook: The influence of content characteristics’, Politics and Governance, 10:1 (2022), pp. 121–32; Peter Trubowitz and Kohei Watanabe, ‘The geopolitical threat index: A text-based computational approach to identifying foreign threats’, International Studies Quarterly, 65:3 (2021), pp. 852–65. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press 16 Jelena Cupać and Tobias Heidenreich Figure 2. Visibility of the UN within feminist and feminist-informed and conservative NGOs’ communication over time. Notes: Smoothed time trends with 95 per cent confidence intervals of the visibility per month (mean) are shown. N=120. Figure 3. Sentiment expressed towards the UN by feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs over time. Notes. Smoothed time trends with 95 per cent confidence intervals for scaled sentences, where the UN is identified as the ‘agent’ or ‘patient’ within a sentence, are shown. Horizontal lines depict mean sentiment expressed by the respective group in their overall communication. N=9.754 for conservative NGOs, N=13.820 for feminist NGOs. a more legitimate organisation than conservatives do. However, for both camps, the sentiment expressed towards the UN remains below the level of the mean sentiment they express in their overall communication, as denoted by the horizontal lines in both graphs in Figure 3. Feminist NGOs, as shown in the left graph in Figure 3, are gradually seeing the UN more negatively. Exhibiting a slight dip in 2015 and a mild peak between 2017 and 2018, we observe a https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press Review of International Studies 17 somewhat steeper decline in sentiment following 2019. All of these dynamics describe the patterns observed for these NGOs as a whole, as we cannot see any single NGO driving particular dips or peaks (see Figure A1 in the Appendix).52 For conservative NGOs, on the other hand, we see distinctly more fluctuation. While more or less steady until 2015, the sentiment towards the UN gets significantly more negative with a clear dip in 2017. As the right graph in Figure 3 shows, texts touching upon UN matters get more positive afterwards with a distinct peak mid-2018, followed by a steep negative drift until the end of the investigated time period. For this group of NGOs, we similarly looked at the disaggregated scores (see Figure A2 in the Appendix),53 indicating that, while overall dynamics describe patterns of most individual NGOs well, the peak in 2017 is particularly driven by the Heritage Foundation. The trends in the displayed sentiment scores raise questions about the sources of legitimacy beliefs driving these evaluation patterns. In order to delve more deeply into this issue, we focused on the distinct periods mentioned here. The results of this qualitative analysis are reported in the following section. Feminist, feminist-informed, and conservative NGOs’ sources of legitimacy beliefs about the UN Feminist and feminist-informed NGOs. In 2015, feminist and feminist-informed NGOs exhibited a minor negative shift in their evaluation of the UN. An examination of the documents they released during that time reveals that this change was principally driven by their discontent with the UN’s performance, interpreted through the lens of their ideology, and problems related to the UN’s procedures, particularly being denied access to significant UN forums. The dissatisfaction of these NGOs with the UN’s performance was mainly focused on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As the implementation of these goals was coming to a close and preparations were underway for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), feminists’ discontent centred on the numerous unmet targets. Essentially, they were more concerned with the UN’s inaction than its actions, with some even labelling the MDGs as a global failure that led to seven wasted years (ID: 5910).54 They perceived the progress as sluggish and inconsistent across various countries and regions, with maternal and child mortality notably experiencing the least improvement (ID: 851). Consequently, they urged that the upcoming SDGs strengthen the connection between development and human rights, particularly women’s rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights (ID: 333, 5866). A procedural reason for the negative evaluation of the UN by feminist and feminist-informed NGOs in 2015 was their exclusion from the CSW negotiations commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration (ID: 814, 823, 3576). States decided to draft a political declaration before civil society could convene in New York (ID: 823). Feminists found this exclusion deeply troubling, given their long history with the CSW and the fact that the Beijing Declaration, their brainchild and a major UN success, was at stake. Their concerns were further exacerbated by the content of the political declaration, which they saw as weak and ahistorical (ID: 823). The declaration not only failed to recognise the feminist contribution to the Beijing Declaration but also overlooked essential issues such as gender-based violence, an inclusive definition of women and girls, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (ID: 823). Feminists also noted that this development significantly empowered their opponents, conservative anti-rights groups (ID: 823). In 2017, there was a slight improvement in the feminist perception of the UN compared to the previous period. This shift was also driven by their positive evaluation of the UN’s performance and procedures, particularly regarding its agencies and special representatives. Accordingly, the feminist and feminist-informed NGOs expressed approval for various actions within the UN, such 52The Appendix is available online. 53The Appendix is available online. 54Examined documents are listed in the Appendix. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press 18 Jelena Cupać and Tobias Heidenreich as the Human Rights Council’s (HRC) decision to extend the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders (ID: 5060, 5020, 5093), the appointment of the UN’s first expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) (ID: 5029), the strengthening of the UN’s treaty bodies, particularly the one on CEDAW (ID: 4986), UNESCO’s initiatives in the realm of women and girl empowerment (ID: 9217), and the second High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) holding sexual and reproductive health and rights in high regard (ID: 183). Importantly, in all these instances, these NGOs positively assessed the willingness of the UN’s bureaucracy and special representatives to grant them access and foster collaboration. This, as we will show below, was a source of great irritation for conservative NGOs. From 2020 to 2022, we observe a steady downtrend in the feminist evaluation of the UN. Understanding this decline requires noting the context of those years: the COVID pandemic, worsening climate change, and a worldwide strengthening of conservative and far-right groups. As before, the feminist critiques of the UN centred primarily on the organisation’s procedures and performance. Regarding procedures, the COVID pandemic hindered the in-person attendance of feminist and feminist-informed NGOs at many crucial UN meetings. In their words, they were ‘locked out during lockdown’ (ID: 6283). They observed that, particularly in meetings related to human rights, disarmament, and peace and security, issues such as travel restrictions, the global south’s unstable internet access, time zone challenges, and other similar problems all impeded the meaningful participation of NGOs in UN processes (ID: 6283, 459). Adding to their frustration was the perceived hypocrisy, whereby, for example, in 2021, access to the Third Committee of the General Assembly was granted to member states, UN staff, and resident journalists but not to them (ID: 4190). Besides fearing that the COVID pandemic was being leveraged as a pretext to marginalise civil society within the UN, feminists raised concerns about how this exclusion reflected in the UN’s performance. The outcome documents from numerous meetings and UN actions seemed to persistently overlook or advance a weaker understanding of gender equality and women’s rights. At the same time, concerns grew that anti-rights conservatives were gaining ground (ID: 1139), with funding being an important area of concern. They observed that, amid the COVID-induced setbacks in gender equality and women’s rights, ‘feminist funding pales in comparison to anti-feminist and anti-LGBT funding’ (ID: 451). Conservative NGOs. In 2017, the conservative NGOs’ evaluation of the UN declined sharply, reaching its lowest point since 2012. This negative evaluation was based on the UN’s performance, interpreted through the lens of their ideology, as well as procedural matters that underscored this performance. Regarding the UN’s performance, conservatives’ main criticisms were aimed at various UN agencies, including the WHO, UNFPA, CCPR, and different UN-specialised representatives. They accused the WHO of promoting the use of contraceptives in sub-Saharan Africa that increased women’s risk of HIV and criticised UNFPA for supporting sterilisation and coercive abortion, especially in connection with China’s one-child policy (ID: 15658, 20040). They asserted that UNFPA claims to be a great champion of diversity, but it is the ‘greatest destroyer of cultures, customs, and faith of developing nations in existence today’ (ID: 29761). Furthermore, they blamed the WHO for attempting to establish a customary international right to abortion by publishing interactive databases on global laws and policies, a move they saw as an effort to pressure states to conform to the recommendations of UN agencies and bureaucracy (ID: 16009). Regarding the CCPR, they condemned it for pressuring Ireland, without legal grounds or a clear mandate, to legalise abortion (ID: 30798). Herein also lies their procedure-based critique of the UN agencies. They assert that these agencies act without legal basis concerning abortion and related practices. No UN document, they maintain, establishes the right to abortion, and although phrases such as ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ are mentioned in several landmark documents, they argue that these cannot be used as a surrogate for this right. To them, these actions represent not merely an overreach but https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press Review of International Studies 19 a malicious and biased expansion of the agencies’ mandates, constituting a clear deviation from what they believe should be the UN’s core principles and responsibilities. In mid-2018, the public communication of conservative NGOs regarding the UN became significantly more positive, with two reasons standing out. The first is their attempt to claim ‘ownership’ over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on its seventieth anniversary (ID: 10158, 11961, 10126). Instead of rejecting the UDHR as a progressive and liberal human rights instrument, conservatives have embraced it, yet they sought to advance an originalist interpretation of this document (akin to their approach to the US Constitution). Consequently, they urge the UN to interpret the UDHR’s provisions – such as the right to life, the understanding of the family, and religious freedoms – in line with the conservative perspective. The second reason for the more positive evaluation of the UN during this period stems from the increasingly fruitful collaboration between conservative NGOs and sympathetic UN member states, such as the Holy See and states belonging to the Group of Friends of the Family. Counterbalancing their conflicts with UN agencies and bureaucracy, conservative NGOs targeted their advocacy towards UN state actors. This strategic realignment proved successful in 2018, leading to strong opposition against feminist agendas in several UN fora (ID: 30209, 31595, 15958, 15961). Similar to feminist NGOs, the period between 2020 and 2022 saw a steady downward trend in conservative evaluations of the UN. However, this decline was much steeper for conservatives. While the COVID-19 pandemic was also a focal point for them, the concerns of conservative NGOs were less about restricted access for civil society and more about the UN agencies’ performance during this time. Procedural issues were still pertinent but closely interwoven with performancerelated critiques. The central concern for conservative NGOs during this period was the way the UN and its agencies were categorising abortion and sexual and reproductive health and rights as essential healthcare issues, including them as part of their pandemic-related humanitarian assistance (ID: 28861, 15832, 19405). They staunchly argue that abortionis not the same as food orshelter, with one organisation asserting that the WHO, which should, by virtue of its name, be promoting health, has instead become one of the leading organisations promoting ‘the suppression of life’ rather than an ‘openness to life’ (ID: 28861). The WHO also faced accusations of collusion with China regarding an alleged cover-up of early pandemic warnings (ID: 26600). Regarding procedural critique, much like in previous periods, conservatives accused UN agencies of deceptive tactics. They charged them with employing a ‘stacking’ strategy in their humanitarian assistance packages. Specifically, they claimed that humanitarian aid was made contingent on the target countries’ acceptance of sexual and reproductive health and rights provisions (ID: 19405). This was seen as a manipulative approach, leveraging essential aid to promote particular values or policies that were not universally accepted. Discussion Besides showing that feminist and feminist-informed NGOs on average view the UN more positively than conservative NGOs, our analysis revealed that, over the past decade, these NGOs have evaluated the UN most positively when its performance and procedures resonated with feminist ideological orientation. In terms of performance, this mainly relates to their appreciation of the UN’s bureaucracy, agencies, specialised bodies, and special representatives when promoting gender equality and women’s rights. On the procedural front, they underscore these actors’ readiness to engage in close collaboration with feminist and feminist-informed NGOs. Performance and procedure as sources of legitimacy belief have also been central to these NGOs’ most pronounced negative evaluation of the UN. Performance-wise, they fault the UN for not adequately implementing gender equality and women’s rights commitments and often overlooking these concerns in its critical human rights and developmental policies. In the last decade, this criticism has been especially pronounced in relation to the UN’s approach to MDGs and its COVID responses. On the https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press 20 Jelena Cupać and Tobias Heidenreich procedural front, their primary grievance is their exclusion from key UN fora, which, they argue, does not just curtail their advocacy efforts but also weakens the UN’s transparency and accountability. They note that this sidelining has coincided with a rise in conservative voices. While feminist and feminist-informed NGOs, in principle, support diverse civil sector representation in the UN, they view the growing influence of conservative NGOs as a barrier to their goals, leading to a more negative evaluation of the UN. Instrumental concerns about resource availability have also influenced their criticism during the studied period. This criticism too is linked to the rise of conservative NGOs, perceived to have significantly greater access to funding. We found no evidence of the boomerang effect – an instance where engagement with the UN is explicitly connected to specific repressive contexts affecting local feminist activists – playing a role in feminists’ positive or negative evaluation of the UN. Conservative NGOs evaluated the UN most positively when advancing the ‘originalist’ interpretation of its foundational texts, most prominently the UDHR. This cannot strictly be related to any of the sources of legitimacy beliefs we listed, pointing to a possible source of legitimacy beliefs that IO literature overlooks: one gained through asserting ownership over an IO’s normative outputs. While feminists can claim such ownership due to their pivotal role in shaping the UN’s key documents and feel snubbed when this contribution is ignored, conservatives lack such a historical claim. Instead, they position themselves as guardians of the original interpretations of the UN’s landmark human rights documents. The conservative NGOs’ more positive evaluation of the UN is further linked to procedural elements, such as their alliance with conservative states, which grants them access to and influence over UN decisions and performance. Procedural and performative issues, rooted in rigid ideological standpoints, emerge as the main drivers behind conservative NGOs’ most pointed critiques of the UN. Contrary to feminist and feminist-informed NGOs, conservative NGOs view the UN with particular disdain when its bureaucracy, agencies, and special representatives champion progressive views, notably on issues like abortion, sexual orientation and gender identity, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. While their criticisms are based on performance, they also carry significant procedural reservations. Yet, unlike feminists, their procedural concerns are not predominantly about participation, transparency, or accountability, though these matters are not trivial to them. Instead, they primarily criticise UN actors for maliciously and deceptively overstepping their mandates and deviating from the UN’s foundational principles. A particularly salient criticism accuses these actors of coercing developing nations into embracing progressive objectives. Conclusion Employing a mixed-method approach and making a conceptual distinction between sources of legitimacy beliefs and legitimacy evaluations, the paper has explored under what circumstances and holding which legitimacy beliefs feminist and feminist-informed NGOs, and conservative NGOs, are most inclined to evaluate the UN positively or negatively. The study was comparative in nature: it aimed to examine how feminist and conservative NGOs perceive and engage with the UN while confronting each other. As such, we aimed to provide a possible novel approach for studying IO legitimacy in the context of the ongoing illiberal backlash. Current literature often casts illiberal factions as the main challengers of the liberal international order. However, our findings indicate that while feminists generally view the UN more positively than conservatives, the presence and influence of conservative NGOs prompt them to also give a less positive evaluation, though not yet amounting to outright contestation. Conversely, conservative NGOs are not merely contesting the UN but also striving to claim ownership over it and its normative framework. While they reject the liberal normative framework, they nonetheless maintain a commitment to the UN itself. We believe this comparative and relational insight, which challenges black and white portrayals of liberal and illiberal factions, could serve as a foundation for further research into illiberal challenges to the liberal international order. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press Review of International Studies 21 An important question for both future research and practice is: What does this mean for the UN and its ability to exercise authority on gender equality and women’s rights? The UN has to find a way of dealing with an ideological split that is becoming increasingly clearer. Feminist NGOs are becoming more vocal in their calls for the UN to take concrete actions that would support and encourage feminist engagement. They also advocate for the UN to actively combat conservative attacks rather than allowing them to go unchallenged or recognised as legitimate civil society participants. The primary targets of these calls are the UN bureaucracy, various UN mandate holders, and the states known for their progressive outlook – the very agents conservative NGOs associate with their negative evaluation of the UN. The consequence of this split is growing distrust in the UN on both the feminist and conservative sides and a diminishing overall legitimacy of the organisation, which hampers its capacity to establish new rules and norms regarding gender equality and women’s rights and to enforce those previously adopted. It remains to be seen and subject to further research what measures, if any, the UN can undertake to bolster its legitimacy in this domain while avoiding being accused of silencing the diversity of voices that it officially supports. Appendix Dictionary UN actors55 united nation, un, unhq, security council, unsc, sc, p5, general assembly, unga, ga, first committee, second committee, third committee, human rights committee, fourth committee, fifth committee, sixth committee, 1st committee, 2nd committee, 3rd committee, 4th committee, 5th committee, 6th committee, department of economic and social affairs, desa, secretary general, sec gen, unsg, sg, usg, special envoy, sesg, economic and social council, ecosoc, commission on the status of women, csw, fourth world conference on women, beijing conference, beijing declaration, platform for action, beijing pfa, pfa?, beijing committee, beijing20, beijing +20, bejing25, beijing +25, beijing +25, youth forum, committee on the elimination of discrimination against women, cedaw, entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women, unifem, civil society advisory, csag, trust fund, trust fund to end violence against women, women asia and the pacific, women office, international research and training institute for the advancement of women, international research and training institute, instraw, lgbtqi +core, commission for social development, csocd, commission on social development, economic and social commission, escap, economic commission, ece, unece, non-governmental liaison service, ngls, committee on non-governmental organizations, committee on ngo, ngo committee, human rights council, human right council, council of human rights, unhrc, hrc, human rights mechanisms, commission on human rights, unchr, chr, human rights commission, office of the high commissioner for human rights, ohchr, human rights office, high commission, working group on arbitrary detention, wgad, working group on business and human rights, wgbhr, committee on the elimination of racial discrimination, cerd, committee on economic, social and cultural rights, cescr, committee on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families, cmw, committee on the rights of the child, child rights committee, crc, special rapporteur, human rights committee, committee on human rights, high commissioner for refugees, refugee agency, unhcr, international organi(z|s)ation for migration, iom, relief and works agency for palestine refugees in the near east, unrwa, unicef, children fund, world health organization, world health organisation, world health assembly, programme on hiv and aids, program on hiv and aids, unaids, hiv/aids agency, food and agriculture organi(z|s)ation, fao, international labor organi(z|s)ation, ilo, world food program, wfp, food system summit, industrial development organization, unido, world truism organi(z|s)ation, unwto, population fund, unfpa, fpa, population (agency|group|unit), population control agency, population control organi(z|s)ation, fund for population, family planning fund, reproductive health fund, icpd +20, maternal and newborn health thematic fund, maternal health fund, mhtf, international conference on population and development, icpd, cairo international conference, cairo +20, icpd, population division, commission on population and development, cpd, population and development commission, population information network, popin, undp, development program, development (fund|agenda|system|partner), conference on environment and development, unced, rio de janeiro earth summit, rio summit, rio conference, earth summit, world summit on sustainable development, rio +, conference on sustainable development, uncsd, earth summit 2012, sustainable development group, unsdg, undg, human development index, hdi, development cooperation forum, dcf, sustainable development group, development group, international fund for agricultural development, idaf, millennium summit, millennium declaration, millennium development goals, mdg, sustainable development goals, sdgs, agenda 2030, world summit, *educational, scientific and cultural organization, unesco, statistical commission, unsd, statistics division, undata, unu, research institute for social development, unrisd, interregional crime and justice research institute, unicri, human settlement program, habitat assembly, *tax committee, international civil service commission, icsc, department of public information, dpi, united nations universal periodic review, un universal periodic review, universal periodic review, upr, ocha, humanitarian air service, peacekeeping forces, 55Dictionary compiled using regex, accounting for various alternating forms of keywords. Not all details are listed here to enhance readability. Scripts are available upon request and will be published alongside the manuscript. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052510137X Published online by Cambridge University Press 22 Jelena Cupać and Tobias Heidenreich appeals tribunal, unat, international law commission, law commission, ilc, trusteeship council, intergovernmental committee of experts on sustainable development financing, intergovernmental committee, economic commission for latin america and the caribbean, uneclac, eclac, office at geneva, unog, international criminal court, icc, icct, international criminal tribunal, ictr, icty, disarmament commission, undc, youth assembly, office on drugs and crime, unodc, environment programme, unep, international civil aviation organization, icao, intergovernmental panel on climate change, ipcc, convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, crpd, united nations convention on the rights of the child, uncrc, crc, united nations framework convention on climate change, unfccc, geneva convention, universal declaration of human rights, charter of the united nations, #charter, international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, resolution 1325, standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners, smrs Figure A1. 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AWID (3 October 2014). ‘Conflict, poverty and climate change remain challenges to achieving the MDGs In Ivory Coast, should be priorities post 2015’. Retrieved from https://www.awid.org//news-and-analysis/conflict-poverty-andclimate-change-remain-challenges-achieving-mdgs-ivory-coast ID: 1139. AWID (15 June 2021). ‘Time for action: Stop the anti-rights infiltration of the UN!’. Retrieved from https://www. awid.org//publications/time-action-stop-anti-rights-infiltration-un ID: 1418. CARE (13 November 2021). ‘No breakthrough in Glasgow: Developed countries do not take responsibility for damage done’. Retrieved from https://www.care-international.org/news/press-releases/no-breakthrough-in-glasgowdeveloped-countries-do-not-take-responsibility-for-damage-done-1 ID: 1492. CARE (3 March 2021). ‘CARE report reveals UN and wealthy nations’ lack of funding for women in emergencies’. 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