The Death of Major International Organizations: When Institutional Stickiness is not Enough

Abstract

Major international organizations (IOs) are heavily contested, but they are rarely dissolved. Scholars have focused on their longevity, making institutional arguments about replacement costs and institutional assets as well as IO agency to adapt and resist challenges. This article analyzes the limits of institutional stickiness by focusing on outlier cases. While major IOs are dissolved at considerably lower rates than minor IOs, the article nevertheless identifies twenty-one cases where major IOs have died since 1815. These are tough cases as they do not conform to our institutionalist expectations. To better understand these rare but important events, the article provides case illustrations from the League of Nations and International Refugee Organization, which were dissolved due to their perceived underperformance and a disappearing demand for cooperation. These cases show the limits of the institutional theories of IO stickiness: sometimes member states find high replacement costs justified or consider assets as sunk costs, and IOs may lack agency to strategically respond. This article refines theories of institutional stickiness and contributes to the institutional theory of the life and death of IOs.

Are international organisations in decline? An absolute and relative perspective on institutional change

“…Yet impressive as this scholarship is, scholars have thus far not systematically informed us of the consequences of these challenges: Whether IOs are in fact in decline—defined as a ‘gradual and continuous loss of strength, numbers, quality, or value’ (Oxford Dictionary, n.d.). We know about the establishment and design of IOs (Hooghe et al, 2019; Johnson, 2013; Koremenos et al, 2001), their development (Barnett & Coleman, 2005; Colgan et al, 2012; Hanrieder, 2015; Lipscy, 2017) and increasingly also their death and replacement (Cottrell, 2016; Debre & Dijkstra, 2021; Dijkstra & Debre, 2022; Eilstrup‐Sangiovanni, 2020, 2021; Gray, 2018; Shanks et al, 1996). But the phase of decline —which normally precedes death or replacement—remains understudied.…”

Institutional leadership during tough times

“…This dissertation offers two key contributions to the international relations (IR) scholarship on IOs. First, IR researchers have recently paid more attention to challenges and institutional outcomes for IOs amid an intensified debate on the crisis of multilateralism (De Vries et al, 2021;Dijkstra, 2021a, 2022;Dijkstra and Debre, 2022;Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, 2020;Hopewell, 2020;Ikenberry, 2018;Kruck and Zangl, 2020;Lake, et al, 2021;Mearsheimer, 2019;Schweller and Pu, 2011;Sinha, 2021;Vestergaard and Wade, 2015;Walter, 2021). A core part of that debate is that, while the post-WWII period saw the preferences of many states-especially Western states under the leadership of the US-converging in support of a global multilateral order, today the environment is markedly different.…”