Predicting Unilateral Withdrawals from Multilateral International Treaties, 1945-2022

• In Event: Law and Institutions

Abstract

The reasons why states cheat on their international commitments have been extensively covered in the literature, but the unilateral withdrawals from multilateral international treaties (MITs) are largely overlooked. The latter state behaviour has started to receive more attention after Brexit and other high-profile cases in the last decade, which witnessed increasing concerns about the future of multilateralism. The existing scholarship is limited mainly to descriptive analyses on a sample of MITs or exits from international organizations, which constitute a subset of MITs. Addressing this gap in the literature, we have compiled a comprehensive dataset including all cases of unilateral withdrawals from MITs identified among more than 34,000 international agreements for 1945-2022. We first conducted a qualitative analysis of the data, which reveal that the lack of state resources, decolonization and state formation/dissolution emerge as reasons for withdrawals in addition to well-studied factors such as national security and regime inefficiency. Based on our exploratory research, we theorize that states may unilaterally withdraw from MITs due to a large number of international regime- and state-driven reasons. Our quantitative analysis indicates that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council tend to exit MITs due to state-driven factors, whereas high-income countries and democracies withdraw due to regime-driven ones. Taken together, domestic politics, sovereignty and economic interests are cited more often as a reason for unilateral withdrawals from MITs in the 21st century.

Authors

• Tuğba Bayar, Bilkent University

• Murat Bayar, Social Sciences University of Ankara