How Other Countries React to Challenges to International Institutions

• In Event: Analyzing the Globalization Backlash: New Explanations

Abstract

Popular challenges to international institutions present a growing problem for international cooperation. This paper presents a framework for analyzing the systemic consequences of such challenges. It focuses on the problems that unilateral, voter-endorsed attempts to withdraw from or renegotiate the terms of existing international institutions create for this institution’s other member states. These states face an “accommodation dilemma”: accommodating the challenging state`s demands creates political contagion risks and implies a redistribution of cooperation gains in the challenging country’s favor, but not accommodating these demands can be very costly. Drawing on comparative case studies of nine referendum-endorsed challenges to international institutions and original survey evidence from approximately 60.000 EU-27 Europeans surveyed in the context of the Brexit withdrawal negotiations, the paper shows that this framework can help us better understand the negotiation dynamics and systemic outcomes that voter-endorsed challenges to international institutions produce.

Author

• Stefanie Walter, University of Zurich