International Organizations in Turbulent Times: Exit-Related Challenges from Within

The recent withdrawals of Russia from the Council of Europe and the British exit from the European Union attracted considerable public and scholarly attention. RUXIT and BREXIT are not the only instances in which a member state left a regional international organization (RIO). This paper conducts a comparative study of 73 RIOs in existence between 1945 and 2022 and shows that they have faced numerous challenges from within, such as more than 120 withdrawal threats and more than 50 exits. These exit-related challenges can harm international cooperation, trigger further disintegration, and endanger the multilateral world order as we know it. However, not all states are equally inclined to (threaten to) withdraw from RIOs. Also, while some RIOs were subject to several exits (e.g., COMESA), others experienced just one (e.g., EU), and yet others never lost members (e.g., ASEAN). Addressing such puzzles, the paper draws on rationalist and constructivist approaches to cooperation and discord as well as crises and develops a series of hypotheses to identify the conditions under which exit-related contestations of RIOs occur. The paper’s findings contribute to our understanding of the resilience of RIOs and the limits of multilateral cooperation in the context of turbulent times.