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In the wake of international organisations' (IOs) politicisation, treaty-based transfers of authority to or from IOs have virtually come to a standstill. Instead, we increasingly see instances of informal internationalisation and unilateral renationalisation of IO authority. In this article, we introduce a Political Contest Theory (PCT) that explai...
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... the above propositions explain the informal internationalisation and the unilateral renationalisation independently of each other (see Figure 2), our third PCT proposition is about the dynamic interplay of these authority transfers (see Figure 3). We hold that the internationalisation of authority pushed by cosmopolitans and the renationalisation of authority pushed by communitarians dynamically drive each other not only toward ever more polarisation and thus an ever-deeper cleavage, but also toward ever more unstable outcomes. ...
Citations
... There is anecdotal evidence of states, such as the UK in the run-up to Brexit or the Trump Administration in its contestation of the WTO, linking their contestation of international institutions to their inability to prevent undesired institutional policies and their goal to 'take back control'. This is reflected in recent research on international authority, its politicization, and the endogenous sources of the contestation of the LIO, which suggests that member states' contestation of international institutions may be related to a general decline in states' negative institutional power in international institutions, i.e., their institutionally determined opportunities to avoid undesired outcomes brought about by international institutions (Zürn 2018; Rittberger 2023; Heinkelmann-Wild, Kruck and Zangl 2024;Goddard et al. 2024;Kreuder-Sonnen and Zangl 2024). Such opportunities include internal options to prevent undesired policies (e.g., through veto rights) and external options to evade undesired outcomes (e.g., thanks to the availability of attractive unilateral, bilateral or multilateral outside alternatives to which a dissatisfied power might shift) (see, e.g. ...
... Our argument builds on and contributes to existing institutionalist literature on the contestation of international institutions. We build on this scholarship by embracing their fundamental claim that endogenous features of international institutions are crucial for understanding their contestation (Lipscy 2017;Zürn 2018;Börzel and Zürn 2021;Dijkstra and Ghassim 2024; Kreuder-Sonnen and Rittberger 2023; Debre and Dijkstra 2020;Biermann and Daßler 2024;Kreuder-Sonnen and Zangl 2024). We advance this literature by theorizing how states' negative institutional power shapes the bargaining logic underlying institutional contestation. ...
International institutions are increasingly under attack from their member states, who embark on varying and sometimes escalating modes of contestation. At the same time, states’ negative institutional power, i.e. their opportunities to avoid undesired outcomes in international institutions, has been declining for some time. This paper claims that dissatisfied states’ negative institutional power endowments are key to understanding their varying contestation modes: the more limited (extensive) the negative institutional power of dissatisfied states in an institution, the more radical (moderate) modes of institutional contestation they will choose. We argue that, all else equal, states’ (1) inside options to prevent undesired outcomes within the institution and (2) their outside options to evade undesired outcomes by leaving the institution jointly condition whether they choose a strategy of voice, subversion, exit, or rollback to contest the dissatisfying institution. We assess the plausibility of our Negative Institutional Power Theory (NIPT) by means of four detailed case studies of the Trump Administration’s contestation of the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the Paris Agreement, and the Iran Nuclear Deal. We demonstrate the generalizability of our arguments by assessing our claims across eight additional instances of other dissatisfied powers’ contesting different international institutions. The twelve case studies demonstrate that negative power matters for states’ choice of institutional contestation modes. Our findings suggest that whether, in the future, international institutions will be increasingly challenged from within and outside, can be influenced by reforms that grant (or deny) states negative institutional power.
... Further, RIOs can respond to exit-related challenges through institutional changes concerning organizational structure, processes, or the policy dimension to prevent exit threats from being realized or to pave the way for reentries of previously exited states. 2 These changes can take different directions, leading to further regional integration or disintegration and possibly also the decline of (R)IOs (Vollaard 2018;Kreuder-Sonnen and Rittberger 2023;Kreuder-Sonnen and Zangl 2024). More specifically, when studying institutional change, we distinguish between institutional strengthening, institutional weakening, and the absence of both (no change). ...
... K different directions, ranging between greater regional integration and disintegration (Vollaard 2018;Kreuder-Sonnen and Rittberger 2023;Kreuder-Sonnen and Zangl 2024). Consequently, institutional changes could also lead a RIO closer to what existing research describes as a "zombie" status (Gray 2018) or even lead to its eventual dissolution and replacement (Debre and Dijkstra 2021;Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2020. ...
Since 1945, there have been more than 120 instances of states threatening to withdraw from international organizations with regional membership criteria (RIOs) and over 50 cases in which states in fact left RIOs. Recent examples include withdrawal threats by Qatar toward the Gulf Cooperation Council and Brazil toward MERCOSUR, as well as the actual exits of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU) and of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger from the Economic Community of West African States. Withdrawal threats and exits represent shocks with potentially significant implications for RIOs and their integration projects. While existing research has focused on the future of EU integration after Brexit, this paper is the first to analyze the effects of threats to leave and the realization thereof on RIOs and regional integration from a broader comparative perspective. RIOs can respond to exit-related challenges through institutional change, which can take the form of institutional strengthening or weakening. Having conducted a series of explorative qualitative case studies, we find that while (1) the extent of problem pressure induced through exit-related challenges influences institutional change, (2) the materialization and directionality of these changes also depends on other factors, such as external windows of opportunity and the distribution of power and preferences within the RIO. Furthermore, (3) institutional change often takes the form of institutional strengthening, indicating the general resilience of international organizations in the context of exit-related challenges.
