How incipient IOs find their place: The AIIB’s insertion to the international regime complex of financial assistance

Upon establishment, new international organizations (IOs) are not isolated entities but part of regime complexes teeming with established IOs, each with varying degrees of mandate and membership overlap. This paper explores how emerging IOs, acting as proxies for their most influential founding member states, secure their position within these pre-existing regime complexes. It posits that gaining a foothold requires the pursuit of two primary objectives: (1) enhancing legitimacy in relation to other IOs and their member states, and (2) expanding political influence within daily policymaking processes. To achieve these overarching goals, emerging IOs are incentivized to engage in two types of strategies concurrently: social positioning and turfseeking strategies. The former aim to establish social ties with existing IOs and gain legitimacy among current and prospective member states. The latter involve various forms of strategic (non-) cooperation with existing IOs to expand both the functional and political scope of their activities. The paper argues that the appeal of these inter-institutional strategies is contingent on pre-existing inter-institutional structures and geopolitical context. Contrary to accounts expecting counterinstitutionalization to result in conflict or a functional division of labor, the paper suggests that especially in the early years of incipient IOs, we are likely to observe both, dense social interaction, and cooperation with incumbent IOs, as well as competitive "turf wars" for political influence. This paper empirically substantiates these claims using original social network data and quantitative project data from the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) from its inception in 2016 to late 2023. The paper demonstrates how the AIIB’s early navigation of the regime complex consisted of both social positioning strategies vis-à-vis incumbent IOs and turf-seeking strategies aimed at close cooperation with established IOs in geopolitically distant target countries, while simultaneously gradually expanding the scope of its activities in China’s geopolitical backyard and with activities less regularly exercised by pre-existing development IOs.