Escalating Contestations in International Organizations

In recent years, contestations of the liberal international order have been extensively debated, with research focusing on the drivers of member state contestations in organizations such as the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, on underlying reasons for the contestation of and dissatisfaction with IOs, the effects of contestations on IOs, and the factors contributing to IO vitality, decline, and death. Thereby, expressions of severe dissatisfaction, exit threats and withdrawal as forms of increasingly severe contestation of IOs by their own member states have received specific scholarly attention. Studies have shed light on the conditions under which dissatisfaction is articulated in form of public critique, under which conditions exit threats are likely to occur, and when exits can be expected. Yet, these phenomena are not isolated in nature but interrelated. Critique can spiral into threats and ultimately also into exits. Nevertheless, no study has so far examined the escalation dynamics of severe contestations within international organizations. We do not yet know under which conditions voiced critique of the IO is a one-off contestation of a member state that does not escalate further and under what conditions the contestation becomes increasingly severe in turning first into exit threats and possibly also into exits from the IO in question. We do likewise not know under what conditions escalations can be prevented and stay at the stage of critique or exit threats, respectively. Filling this gap is important, as the consequences of contestations for IOs become increasingly severe, the further the contestations escalate. Hence, we investigate why states – when being severely dissatisfied with an IO – sometimes merely opt for critique but spiral to exit-threats and even escalate to exits in other instances. We develop an escalation model, along with corresponding hypotheses considering (IO) concessions, domestic (political) change and (reduced) issue salience. The empirical plausibility of these hypotheses is considered on the basis of qualitative case studies of one specific type of IOs – regional IOs – across varying geographical contexts.