Let it Go or Fight for It? Exploring the Reactions of Intergovernmental Organisations to States' Exit Requests

This paper conducts a preliminary exploration of the institutional strategies that are employed by intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) whenever a member-state expresses its intention to withdraw from the respective organisation. Based on the assumption that international institutions are designed as rational responses to collective problems, the paper asks whether the type of collective problem that the IGO addresses bears any influence on how MSs treat exit requests. To answer this question, it employs exit incidents from organisations with substantially different aims and mandates. In order to clearly observe the effect of this variable, it holds constant the power capacity of the exiting MS by looking only at withdrawal threats articulated by weaker MSs. Hence, it examines the North Korean withdrawal from the IAEA in 1994, as a withdrawal from a security-related organisation, the Greek withdrawal from NATO’s military branch in 1974, as a withdrawal from a military-related organisation, Venezuela’s withdrawal from the IMF in 2007, as a withdrawal from an economic organisation, and ,finally, Indonesia’s withdrawal from the UN in 1965, as a withdrawal from a loose political organisation. Until now incidents of disintegration have been approached from a legal, Eurocentric and US-centric perspective and occasionally via formal models of exit, voice and loyalty. Building on the latter concept, the analysis goes beyond the notion of exit costs by asking how the remaining MSs conceive and estimate these costs. Its aim is to provide a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms that lead the remaining MSs to adopt certain positions vis-à-vis such phenomena. The paper does not aspire to present a detailed analysis of all relevant variables. Instead, it attempts to begin the respective discussion from one of the most important variables for the governance of IGOs, i.e. the nature of the collective problem that the organisation aims to solve.