Biography

Henning Schmidtke is a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). He has held research positions at the University of Bremen, St. Gallen, Technische Universität Dresden, the Technical University of Munich, and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard. His research interests include the formation, design, and behaviour of international organizations and the contentious politics around them.

At the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, Henning focuses on the legitimation strategies of regional intergovernmental organizations (RIO). Specifically, his project will explore how RIO's communicate their value to relevant audiences and what explains the variation of such legitimation discourses across organizations and over time.

Recent research output

• SCHMIDTKE, Henning; LENZ, Tobias (2024), Expanding or defending legitimacy? : why international organizations intensify self-legitimation, Article
• LENZ, Tobias; SCHMIDTKE, Henning (2023), Agents, audiences and peers : why international organizations diversify their legitimation discourse, Article
• SCHMIDTKE, Henning; SCHIRMER, Swantje; KRÖSCHE, Niklas; LENZ, Tobias (2024), The legitimation of international organizations : introducing a new dataset, Article