The politics of concessions: How international organizations respond to member states’ exit threats

With international organizations increasing in number and policy scope, so, too, has the potential for states’ dissatisfaction with them. One possibility for states to signal severe dissatisfaction with international organizations is by threatening to withdraw from the organization in question. While the realization of threats into actual exits challenges international organizations, their hands are not tied as they may respond to exit threats through (costly) concessions aimed at appeasing the threatening state. This paper systematically investigates the concession politics of 73 regional international organizations between 1945 and 2022, revealing that 43 out of 123 exit threats were met with concessions. To explain this variation, the paper draws on international organization contestation research, theorizing international organizations’ ability and willingness to grant concessions. Based on a quantitative analysis of the broader pattern and a qualitative case study zooming into the underlying causal mechanisms, the paper demonstrates that regional international organizations are more willing to grant concessions when several states form an exit-threatening coalition, when the disagreement between the international organization and the member state is less severe, and when they include a state willing to perform hegemonic functions among their members. By contrast, ability factors such as decision-making rules or international organization wealth have no systematic effects.