After Exit: Explaining the (In)Stability of Multilateral Cooperation after Hegemonic Withdrawal

Not only since the election of Donald Trump, the United States (US) repeatedly withdrew its material support or even membership from multilateral institutions it helped to create. Institutional trajectories after hegemonic exit differ from recent expectations about the future of the Liberal International Order (LIO). These resemble the classical debate on the possibility of cooperation without hegemonic leadership: not all abandoned institutions are inevitable destabilized, as pessimists in tradition of realist Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST) claim; but institutionalized cooperation is also not always resilient, as some optimists in line with Neo-liberal Institutionalism suggest. The question thus is: What are the conditions and the mechanisms whereby hegemonic exit leads to the stabilization, or destabilization of multilateral institutions? This paper distinguishes four ideal-typical institutional trajectories after hegemonic withdrawal by differentiating two dimensions of destabilization of the status quo ex-ante: (i) an institution’s problem-solving effectiveness; and (ii) its social purpose. Combining insights from functionalist as well as distributive Institutionalism, I assume that hegemonic exit triggers changes of both the functional as well as the power equilibrium underlying a multilateral institution. It thus constitutes both a constraint for effective problem-solving and an opportunity for newly empowered change agents to alter the substantive rules of the game. This paper suggests that the eventual institutional outcome after exit is shaped by (i) remaining members’ evaluation of the functional utility of continued institutional cooperation; as well as (i) the resistance power of defenders of its substantive goals. The plausibility of these conjectures is checked by case studies of abandoned multilateral institutions from diverse issue areas such as the environment, development, human rights, and disarmament. The process-tracing analysis draws on extensive empirical evidence including interviews with participants and official documents. Theoretically, this paper contributes to the literature on the conditions and effectiveness of non-hegemonic cooperation. Practically, it provides policy-makers with information about potentially unintended consequences of exit as well as the margin and prospects of institutional re-stabilization.