ABSTRACT
This chapter frames the puzzle that motivates the book, showing how existing theories of international organization do not fully account for the politics that accompany the constitutional legitimacy of supranational organizations. The dominant approach to explaining the creation of powerful IOs focuses on the functionality of different design choices, arguing that governments choose institutional forms in order to enhance efficient policy coordination, yet this perspective, which broadly conceives of IOs as contracts, provides an overly narrow view on the politics of founding supranational organizations. It largely neglects the symbolic and principled arguments that accompany the effort to legitimate international organizations and thus overlook much of the contentious politics that mark the origins of supranationalism. Constructivist approaches have shown more interest in the politics of legitimacy, but they tend to focus on the legitimation of specific policy choices by IOs and overlook deeper questions of constitutional legitimacy. After identifying the limitations of existing approaches, I briefly introduce the primary argument, discuss its importance, and summarize the remainder of the book, including a discussion of the rationale for the case selection.
