After Exit: Collective Leadership and Institutional Resilience After Hegemonic Withdrawal

Not only since the election of Donald Trump, the United States (US) repeatedly terminated its commitment to or participation within multilateral agreements or international organizations (IOs) it once helped to create. Those multilateral institutions’ varying resilience after the withdrawal of the hegemon, such as the US after the Second World War, constitutes a puzzle for two traditions of International Relations (IR) theorizing: Some institutions are in decay, as realist in tradition of Hegemonic Stability Theory would expect. Other institutions remain resilient, as institutionalist approaches suggest. The question thus is: Under which conditions do multilateral institutions show resilience or decay after hegemonic withdrawal? To answer this question, I first conceptualize institutional resilience and decay based on whether the level of multilateral cooperation decreases or remains stable (or even increases) after hegemonic withdrawal along two dimensions: (1) the level of participation; and (2) the level of performance. I then suggest that multilateral institutions show resilience after hegemonic withdrawal when a single or coalition of states takes over collective leadership. From different variants of institutionalist IR theorizing I derive conditions under which states possess the ability, willingness, or opportunity for leadership transition: States are able to take over leadership when a single or small group of states possess sufficient problem-solving capabilities. States are willing to take over leadership when an institution’s set-up costs were high, or it asymmetrically privileges these states over others. States have the opportunity to take over leadership when an institutional setting is flexible. To identify the (configurations of) conditions that give rise to institutional resilience or decay after hegemonial withdrawal, I conduct a cross-case analysis of more than 80 instances of US withdrawal from multilateral agreements and IOs compiled in an original ExitUS database. I then trace the process of how these (configurations of) conditions shape institutional resilience in selected pathway cases. By contributing to scholarship on the conditions and effectiveness of multilateral cooperation in the absence of a hegemon, this paper yields important implications for the future of the rule-based, international order.