On those rare occasions when scholars of international organizations (IOs) consider the issue of change, they typically highlight the centrality of states. Although states are important for understanding when and why there is a change in the tasks, mandate, and design of IO, IOs themselves can initiate change. Drawing from sociological institutional and resource dependence approaches, in this article we treat IOs as strategic actors that can choose among a set of strategies in order to pursue their goals in response to changing environmental pressures and constraints that potentially threaten their relevance and resource base. We delineate six strategiesFacquiescence, compromise, avoidance, defiance, manipulation, and strategic social construction, and suggest that the strategic choice by IOs is contingent on the level of both organizational insecurity and the congruence between the content of environmental pressures and organizational culture. We emphasize how IOs must make a trade-off between acquiring the resources necessary to survive and be secure, on the one hand, and maintaining autonomy, on the other. We apply this framework to the case of Interpol, investigating how different calculations of these trade-offs led Interpol staff to adopt different strategies depending on its willingness to accept, resist, or initiate changes that demand conformity to external pressures.For all the attention international relations scholars have heaped on international organizations (IOs), they have scarcely considered the fundamental issue of organizational change. 1 We know a lot about the conditions under which states will establish IOs, why states will design them the way they do, and some of the con-International Studies Quarterly (2005) 49, 593-619 ditions under which states will grant autonomy to IOs. 2 But we know relatively little about how, why, and when change will occur.All theories of IO change contain a conceptualization of the relationship between the organization and the environment. The dominant view is that external forces in general and states in particular are responsible for its timing, direction, and content. Although the first wave of studies of IOs detailed their internal characteristics, the general conclusion was that states mattered most. 3 For instance, in their impressive study of decision making in IOs, Cox and Jacobson (1974) argued that the environment is second to none in understanding the sources of influence and reduced the environment to states as primary actors. Contemporary theories have continued this venerable tradition. Realism claims that any change in the mandate or design of the IO owes to demands imposed by Great Powers (Mearsheimer 1995;Gruber 2000;Glennon 2003). Neoliberal institutionalism emphasizes how states construct IOs and assign them various functions in order to overcome problems of collaboration and coordination (Keohane and Martin 1995). Although it recognizes that institutions are sticky, it largely presumes that IOs are fairly responsive to state demands; if not, t...