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International organizations often come under pressure when states desire their reform. Some states threaten to leave international organizations unless their reform demands are met. But how often is threatening to withdraw associated with states demanding institutional reform? And under what conditions do states’ withdrawal threats actually achieve...
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Context 1
... each withdrawal threat, we code several variables: the IO name, country name, year of threat, who made the threat, reason for withdrawal threat, whether reform demands were mentioned, and at least one media resource documenting the announcement. Figures 1 through 3 illustrate some basic patterns in the withdrawal threat data. Figure 1 shows that withdrawal threats have been fairly persistent over time, with a slight uptick after 2005 (but also note that IOs and IO memberships have increased during this time frame as well) (von Borzyskowski and Vabulas 2022, 340-41). ...
Context 2
... 1 through 3 illustrate some basic patterns in the withdrawal threat data. Figure 1 shows that withdrawal threats have been fairly persistent over time, with a slight uptick after 2005 (but also note that IOs and IO memberships have increased during this time frame as well) (von Borzyskowski and Vabulas 2022, 340-41). Some of the clustering around and just after 2010 is explained by member states adopting tighter budgets after the 2008 financial crisis, which sometimes demanded a reckoning in spending. ...
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... position vis-à-vis other member states with typically lesser institutional power (Lipscy, 2015(Lipscy, , 2017von Borzyskowski and Vabulas 2023). To be sure, in order to succeed in inducing institutional changes that accommodate their demands and reduce their dissatisfaction, states in such a position of extensive negative institutional power still need to make their threats to use that negative power credible (Sebenius 1992;Fearon 1994;Schelling 1997;Lipscy 2015;Zangl et al. 2016). ...
... Voice is contestation rhetoric that aims at bringing about institutional accommodation that makes further escalation of contestation unnecessary. To be sure, rhetorical criticism may be fierce, and it usually involves threats to undermine or withdraw from the institution: thus, threatening with further escalation beyond public criticism is a frequent and important tactic of voice (seeBorzyskowski and Vabulas 2023; and Tverskoi 2024b). Moreover, even materially powerful states cannot take for granted that threats of escalating contestation will be taken seriously by other member states and international bureaucracies. ...
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.
... For instance, if a member state that frequently clashes with other members decides to withdraw from the IO, that action may improve the institutions' ability to act and thus ultimately strengthen it. Withdrawals or the threat of withdrawals may also result in overdue IO reform (von Borzyskowski and Vabulas 2023). Nevertheless, both public criticisms and withdrawals areon the face of itchallenges to IOs and also treated as such by the media and IOs doing their part to defend themselves. ...
Member states’ challenges to international organizations (IOs) are at the heart of the supposed crisis of our multilateral order – from the “African bias” debate surrounding the International Criminal Court, to the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” from the European Union, to Trump’s attacks on the World Health Organization during the COVID-19 pandemic. IOs are regularly challenged by their member states in different ways, ranging from verbal criticisms to withdrawals. But why are some IOs challenged more than others? An important – but so far largely theoretical – academic debate relates to the authority of IOs as an explanatory factor for why some face more challenges: Authoritative IOs may invite more challenges (for example, due to domestic contestation) or fewer challenges (due, in part, to the investment of member states and their greater capacity to resolve conflicts internally). Our article assesses these explanations using the Andersen-Gill approach for analyzing recurrent events of member states’ public criticisms and withdrawals. We do not find strong and consistent evidence that more authoritative IOs are more regularly challenged by their own member states. There is some evidence that authoritative IOs experience fewer withdrawals, but we find stronger evidence for alternative factors such as preference heterogeneity between members, the existence of alternative IOs, and the democratic composition of an IO’s membership. Our study is significant for scholarly debates and real-world politics, as it implies that granting IOs more authority does not make them more prone to member state challenges.
... For example, the Carter administration withdrew from the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1977(ILO, 1975 and the Reagan administration withdrew from UNESCO in 1984(Washington Post, 1984. During his 2016-2020 administration, President Trump announced that the US would withdraw from several IOs including the World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO, and the Universal Postal Union (UPU), and publicly threatened to withdraw from NATO, NAFTA, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Davis, 2021;von Borzyskowski & Vabulas, 2023). ...
The United States has helped create and lead many international organizations (IOs). Yet in the last six years, the US announced its withdrawal from several IOs including the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the Universal Postal Union. Do Americans care about US withdrawals from IOs? When do Americans support withdrawing from IOs and support candidates who propose this? We argue that Americans’ support for multilateralism tends to divide along party lines, and that IO withdrawal can activate those preferences. We also argue that framing an IO withdrawal as benefiting US national interests can make Americans more likely to favor IO exit. Data from four US survey experiments during the 2016–2020 Trump administration support these arguments. Democrats tend to oppose IO withdrawals while Republicans tend to support them. Further, results show that IO withdrawal (and how it is framed) affects candidate choice and policy support. This suggests that announcing IO withdrawal can be used to rally domestic electoral support. Still, the data also show that a large proportion of the US public values remaining in IOs, even when IOs are imperfect or challenging. In these cases, we note that sunk cost fallacies, status quo bias, and loss aversion may pose friction points for supporting withdrawal. Our findings have important implications for research on public opinion about international cooperation, backlash against IOs, and their life cycles.
... But global problems such as the pandemic and trade imbalances require decisive actions that multilateral organizations struggle to deliver. Frustrated with inaction, disproportionately powerful states have threatened to withdraw from international organizations (von Borzyskowski and Vabulas 2023). ...
The current system of multilateralism, borne out of circumstances after the Second World War, is no longer fit for purpose today. How should this system be reinvented, and what types of research can contribute to its reform? First, it is not enough to tell international organizations that they ought to do more of the same good things such as transparency and engagement; rather, we need contextually grounded and publicly engaged research that helps practitioners dispel tropes and elevate public discourse in a deeply politicized world. Second, being public in nature, international organizations cannot be expected to operate like private firms. Any prescription must take into account their political imperatives. Publicly engaged research on multilateralism should move in three directions: (a) take US-China great power competition as a necessary starting point; (b) support ethnographic and empirical research that sheds light on internal operations, political dynamics, and constraints within international organizations; (c) promote dialogues between academics and practitioners, as this special collection has done.
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.
While international organizations (IOs) have played a central role in global governance in the post-Cold War period, during the last decade many have struggled. Due to the rise of populism, the Trump presidency, and the renewed assertiveness of the emerging powers, various IOs have been challenged in ways that put their ability to perform core functions at risk.
This book studies the responses of IOs to such existential challenges. It focuses on the central institutional actors inside IOs—IO leaders and their bureaucracies—which have a strong interest in the survival and well-being of their organizations. Presenting six case studies and drawing on more than 100 interviews, the book highlights the variation in the way in which these institutional actors try to cope with and counter existential challenges: Some fight tooth and nail to keep their IOs relevant, while other institutional actors are more circumspect in their actions.
The book shows that institutional actors try to tailor their responses to the specific types of existential challenges, but their ability to do so depends on the quality of their leadership, organizational structure, and embedding in external networks. This book is thus about the IOs themselves. It is about those who lead IOs at the top but equally about the desk officers who keep the machinery running. By providing a view from behind the scenes, the book uncovers important processes about the survival of IOs and international institutions.
Recent research has drawn attention to states’ backlash against international organizations (IOs), including whether member state withdrawals affect the longevity of IOs. We therefore ask when do member state withdrawals lead to the death of IOs? We are skeptical of a general link between withdrawal and IO death because on average, any one member is not critical for the survival of an IO. Also, withdrawal is often driven by one member state’s preferences diverging from remaining members; these remaining states may band together after withdrawal, ensuring or even enhancing the longevity of the IO. Even withdrawal by several states may not contribute to IO death because a smaller group of remaining members may better overcome collective action challenges. Nonetheless, exit by an important member may affect IO survival by removing resources, market power, and guidance. We test these arguments using survival models on an original dataset of withdrawals across 532 IOs from 1909 to 2014/2020 and illustrate the dynamics with case vignettes. The results support our arguments: withdrawals in general do not lead to IO death but the withdrawal of founding members can speed IO death. Interestingly, withdrawal by economically powerful states seems to facilitate IO survival (often through reform and/or re-entry). These findings contribute to a better understanding of the lifecycle of IOs as well as to the resilience and vulnerabilities of international cooperation.
I argue that treaty withdrawal has two opposing effects on the development of international law. First, it directly impacts the treaty where it occurs by pushing the remaining members to adopt reforms to maintain cooperation. Second, it indirectly affects the development of other treaties by damaging diplomatic relations between the withdrawing state and other members, hindering negotiations in other areas of cooperation. Consequentially, treaty withdrawal has a mixed impact on the development of international law: it expedites the reform of one treaty while inhibiting reform elsewhere. I test this argument by applying a difference-in-differences design to an original panel of treaties built from the records of the United Nations. My findings reveal that while withdrawal increases the number of reforms in treaties where it occurs, it decreases reforms in similar treaties with comparable memberships. The indirect effect more than cancels out the direct effect. Overall, treaty withdrawal impedes the creation of new international laws.
There is hardly any aspect of social, political, and economic life today that is not also governed internationally. Drawing on debates around hierarchy, hegemony, and authority in international politics, this volume takes the study of the international 'beyond anarchy' a step further by establishing the concept of rule as the defining feature of order in the international realm. The contributors argue that the manifold conceptual approaches to sub- and superordination in the international should be understood as rich conceptualizations of one concept: rule. Rule allows constellations of sub- and superordination in the international to be seen as multiplex, systemic, and normatively ambiguous phenomena that need to be studied in the context of their interplay and consequences. This volume draws on a variety of conceptualizations of rule, exploring, in particular, the practices of rule as well as the relational and dynamic characteristics of rule in international politics.
