Dear colleagues, We are pleased to invite paper proposals for the panel “Populist Impact on International Organizations: Challenges, Cooptation, and Resilience”, which will be part of the Section “21st Century International Organizations: Contestation and Crisis” at the ECPR General Conference 2026 in Kraków (8–11 September 2026). Section details can be found here: https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/SectionDetails/1660 Panel Description Populism, with its varied and often strategic engagement with multilateralism and the Liberal International Order, increasingly shapes international organizations’ legitimacy and authority. While earlier populist governments appeared pragmatic toward IOs, recent developments such as the second Trump presidency and institutional rollbacks signal deeper confrontation. This panel explores if and how populist leaders challenge, coopt, or erode IOs, and how IOs adapt or resist such pressures. We invite theoretical, conceptual, and empirical papers, employing qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods approaches, and covering global, regional, or sector-specific IOs as well as dynamics between IOs and between domestic agencies and IOs. Possible topics include (but are not limited to): Mechanisms through which populist actors contest, bypass, or reshape IO authority Patterns of cooptation and strategic adaptation by IO secretariats Comparative analyses of IO resilience or institutional erosion Populism’s impact on expertise, knowledge production, and bureaucratic autonomy Interactions between domestic populist politics and international commitments Sectoral variation (e.g., development, trade, health, climate, human rights) Multilevel or regional perspectives (e.g., EU, OAS, AU, ASEAN, UN agencies) Submission Details Please submit your paper proposal (title, abstract of 200–300 words, keywords, and author affiliation) by email to bmangit@uni-goettingen.de <mailto:bmangit@uni-goettingen.de> by 20 December 2025. Authors will be notified by 25 December 2025 whether their paper has been included in the panel submission. If your paper is included in the panel submission, you do not need to make a separate paper submission through the ECPR system. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Dr. Burcu Uçaray Mangıtlı Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin Lehrstuhl für Internationale Beziehungen Institut für Politikwissenschaft Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Platz der Göttinger Sieben 3 37073 Göttingen bmangit@uni-goettingen.de 0551 39-26516