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Treaty withdrawal and the development of international law

June 2024
The Review of International Organizations 19(4):785-808

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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.

Withdrawing State Behavior and Preferences Before and After Unilateral Exit, 1945–2018. Left: Average number of multilateral treaty ratifications per year by withdrawing states before and after exit. Right: Average UNGA voting ideal point of withdrawing states each year before and after exit. The shaded region in each plot represents the post-withdrawal period. Grey dashed lines are point-wise 95% confidence intervals

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Illustration of Research Design. Depiction of research design applied to three hypothetical treaty regimes with eight states. Regime A has five member states, denoted by shaded gray segments, in the pre-withdrawal period t = −1. In period t = 0, one state withdraws from Regime A, denoted by the blue segment; Regime A is, therefore, treated directly. The exiting state is also a member of Regime B, as shown by the blue-outlined grey segment in period t = 0. This regime is treated indirectly. The withdrawing state is not a party to Regimes C, as shown by the blue-outlined white segment. Regime C is untreated. The right column illustrates the measurement of overlap. The four remaining members of Regime A at t = 0 are orange; these states are outlined in orange in the other regimes. Overlap equals the percent of a regime’s membership circled in orange; average overlap is used in years with multiple withdrawals

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Parallel Trends and Covariate Balance. Horizontal lines are the standardized mean difference between treated and untreated regimes for covariates (dashed grey lines) and outcomes (black lines) in the three years before withdrawal. The top row provides differences before and after refinement for regimes directly affected by exit. The bottom row presents differences for regimes indirectly affected by exit. Black dashed lines equal to no difference are provided for reference

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Direct Effect of Withdrawal on Reform, 1945–2018. Difference-in-differences estimates of the direct effect of unilateral exit are presented in the shaded region. Placebo estimates are presented in the unshaded region. Thin bars are 95% block-bootstrap confidence intervals; thick bars are 90% confidence intervals

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Direct Effect of Withdrawal on Reform by Power of Exiting State, 1945–2018. Analyses are grouped by the power of the withdrawing state. Plots are otherwise the same as those presented in Fig. 4

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-024-09553-4

1 3

SI: LIFE CYCLES OFINTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

Treaty withdrawal andthedevelopment ofinternational

law

AverellSchmidt1

Accepted: 13 March 2024

2024

Abstract

I argue that treaty withdrawal has two opposing eﬀects on the development of inter-

national 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 devel-

opment 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 ﬁnd-

ings 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.

Keywords International law· International cooperation· Treaty withdrawal

1 Introduction

Recent years have witnessed several high-proﬁle cases of states withdrawing uni-

laterally from international organizations and multilateral treaties (Walter, 2021a,

422). These developments have sparked widespread fears about the collapse of

international institutions and the unraveling of international order (Cronin-Furman

& Schwartz, 2016; Ikenberry, 2018). States’ reactions to withdrawal, however, have

been decidedly more complex.

Responsible editor: Axel Dreher

* Averell Schmidt

aschmidt@g.harvard.edu

1 Harvard University John F Kennedy School ofGovernment, Cambridge, MA, USA

The Review of International Organizations (2024) 19:785–808

/ Published online: 6 June 2024

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

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