Chapter 9 summarizes our theoretical expectations and empirical findings about IO exits. It outlines the implications of IO exit for international cooperation, future research, and policymaking. It also provides additional insight into IO exits that have occurred as regional conflicts have engulfed the world in recent years, exemplified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The chapter analyzes how IO exits might affect international cooperation as multilateralism is being contested on several fronts. It also discusses that patterns of democratic decline and polarized domestic politics may lead the future of IO exits to be different than the past. Even while this contestation is happening, however, we show that IO exits (as well as threats and reentry) extend beyond current affairs; they have been a relatively steady occurrence over time. We conclude by arguing that despite – and sometimes because of – occasional exits, international cooperation continues through IOs and a robust set of other international institutions. We outline several exciting areas for future research that may be inspired by the findings from this book.

Chapter 4 outlines and tests our argument about the consequences of IO withdrawal for exiting states. We argue that there should be negative reputational and cooperative consequences for withdrawing states because IOs operate as hand-tying, credible commitment devices. International actors might regard withdrawal as backing out of a commitment and a signal that decouples the state from a self-chosen “in-group.” Thus, international actors – such as market analysts and other states – may reduce their trust that a withdrawing state will follow through on other commitments. As evidence, we document that withdrawal is associated with worsened perceptions of political risk and investor confidence. We document how the negative reputational consequences vary based on states’ and IOs’ preexisting reputations. We also show that withdrawal reduces the chance of being elected to the UNSC as a non-permanent member and makes states less likely to sign future treaties with the exiting state. We expect the material consequences of withdrawal to be limited due to strategic selection, substitution, and potential gains. We test these arguments on economic IOs because they represent more than half of all IOs and they can be evaluated consistently. We find that withdrawing states on average suffer limited material consequences.

Why do states exit IOs? How often does IO exit happen? And what are the consequences of IO exit for leaving states? Despite recent attention to individual cases and the importance of membership in IOs, little is known about state exit from IOs across states, organizations, and time. Chapter 1 outlines the common logic of IO exit that links withdrawal and suspension: States often use IO exit as a strategy to negotiate institutional change when mechanisms of voice have failed. We summarize our empirical contributions that rely on a new dataset of IO exit across 198 states and 534 IOs from 1913 to 2022. We show that exit is infrequent, intermittent, and often temporary rather than terminal. Factors related to bargaining help predict IO exit, and exit generates negative reputational and cooperative consequences for leaving states. Nonetheless, IO exit is often an imperfect tool in achieving institutional change. Overall, we correct the view of IO exit as recently increasing. We also show that alternative arguments are not correct: IO exit is not widely occurring because of a backlash against globalization, nationalism/populism, IO authority, or legal rules. Moreover, exit is not inconsequential. We end with a roadmap for each chapter.

Chapter 6 details and tests our theory of IO exit by applying it to the predictors of IO suspensions. IO member states use suspension to punish states that have violated IO commitments and to incentivize domestic institutional change. We argue that suspension is not an automatic punishment for violations but instead is influenced by factors related to bargaining and institutional constraints: Violator states that are more powerful, have material resources, and have alliance relationships with regional powers are less likely to be suspended while IOs. Empirically, we analyze 101 IO suspensions from 1939 to 2022 across all IOs and states, and then focus our multivariate analyses on suspensions for political backsliding. This is because we show that most suspensions occur for human rights violations and incursions on democracy commitments (like coups d’état); and narrowing the scope allows us to control for the kinds of violations that prompt suspension. Our quantitative analysis shows that IO membership suspension is imposed against some but not all violators – and that this is partly because powerful states are able to insulate themselves from IO pressures, avoiding punishment for violations that less powerful states get suspended for. IO institutional constraints including their democratic density also affect the likelihood of suspension for political backsliding. Suspension can act as a multilateral diplomatic sanction but power and politics matter.

Chapter 7 details and tests our argument about the consequences of IO suspension. We argue that suspension can lead to negative reputational and cooperative consequences because suspension acts as a heuristic for international actors that the state has violated an international commitment. Suspension sends a signal that the state has been ostracized from a peer club, which removes the seal of approval that comes from membership. Suspension can also make it easier for other international actors to implement sanctions that might otherwise be hampered by collective action or legitimacy challenges. We test our expectations about the consequences of suspension by analyzing 71 IO suspensions for political backsliding from democratically committed IOs but also show some effects for the full set of 101 suspensions from all IOs. We show that ousted states incur reputational harm: This worsened perceptions of political stability and investor confidence scores. We also show that suspended states incur negative cooperative consequences: They have a lower chance of being elected as a non-permanent member in the UNSCand suspension facilitates subsequent sanctions by other international actors. Some suspended states use rhetoric to reject and counter stigmatization, and preemptively withdraw to frame the narrative in their favor. The analyses also show that domestic institutional change following suspension is usually shallow.

Chapter 5 traces the dynamics of our argument about the causes and consequences of IO withdrawal with three qualitative case studies: the US’ withdrawal from the ILO from 1977–1980, Japan’s withdrawal from the IWC in 2019, and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in 2020. The cases show how states often think of withdrawal as a negotiation tool and highlight states’ long-term striving for “better” institutional arrangements through other mechanisms of “voice” before exit. In each case, we use archival research and media sources to document that the desire for IO change prompted exit, that states used withdrawal threats for negotiation, and that negotiation prior to withdrawal happened but fell short of the state’s goals, leading to withdrawal. In the cases of the ILO and IWC, negotiation continued while the state was a non-member and led to its return in the case of the ILO. The case studies also underscore the effects of withdrawal: Each of the withdrawing states suffered negative reputational and cooperative consequences and sometimes material consequences from withdrawal. International actors chastised withdrawing states, and the withdrawers then engaged in rhetorical stigma management to try to lessen the impact.

Chapter 2 theorizes the causes and consequences of state exit from IOs. We explain that IOs start as being beneficial to member states but may become dissatisfying to some states as preferences diverge, power shifts, or IOs themselves evolve. Leaning on the “exit, voice, and loyalty” framework by Hirschman (1970), we argue that dissatisfied states can voice their discontent but when this does not generate desired results, states sometimes use the process of IO exit to invoke change. Threatening and enacting exit can accelerate a tipping point by presenting states with a potential future without the exiting state, which could reduce institutional benefits. The ability to use exit as a negotiation strategy shifts with a state’s bargaining power as well as institutional constraints. As part of the negotiating process, many exit threats are not implemented and many exiting states return to IOs. But exit is costly: Given that exiting states may be perceived as reneging on an international commitment, they can incur negative reputational and cooperative consequences from other actors in the international community. Exiting states may therefore engage in stigma management. And while institutional change is often the goal, exit is usually an imperfect tool for achieving it.

Chapter 8 traces the dynamics of our argument about the causes and consequences of IO suspensions with three qualitative case studies: Honduras’ suspension from and return to the OAS (2009–2011), Syria’s suspension from and return to the Arab League (2011–2023), and Guinea’s suspension from ECOWAS (2021). Honduras’ and Guinea’s suspensions both occurred after coups d’état violated IO commitments. Syria’s suspension was in response to gross human rights violations that stemmed from government-sponsored violence. Each case shows how IO members used suspension as a multilateral diplomatic sanction, signaling peer disapproval, to push states to halt/change behavior. The suspensions catalyzed other international actors to also punish the countries’ political backsliding as seen through follow-on economic sanctions and the withholding of ambassadors. Each of the suspended countries engaged in stigma management after their forced exits. But the cases also show a range of different outcomes: Honduras returned to the OAS after meeting all of the IO’s stipulations for reinstatement; Syria was readmitted to the Arab League even without behavior changes (largely because of shifts in other members’ domestic politics and an intractable stalemate); and Guinea remains suspended from ECOWAS at the time of writing.

Chapter 3 outlines and tests our theory of IO exit by applying it to the predictors of IO withdrawal. We argue that many dissatisfied states use the process of withdrawal to broker deals for institutional change in the IO. Many withdrawals are driven by preference divergence from other member states or declining power. Using our IO Exit dataset, we analyze 387 IO withdrawals from 1913 to 2022 across 534 IOs and 198 states. In categorizing the reasons for state withdrawals, we show that two-thirds of IO withdrawals are motivated by the desire to negotiate change rather than by issues that reflect populism, nationalism, or capitulation toward international cooperation. States also use the threat of withdrawal, which supports the notion that exit is a negotiating process with multiple steps rather than a final or singular act. Withdrawal is usually not permanent; half of the time, states return to the IOs they left. States also likely consider costs a priori and avoid withdrawal if the costs are projected to be too high. This prevents many withdrawals from happening in the first place. We do not find consistent support for alternative arguments that backlash against globalization, encroachment from authoritative IOs, nationalism/populism, or legal rules are robust drivers of withdrawal.