Inken von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas, Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change. Cambridge University Press, 2025. ISBN: 9781009532280.
16 October 2026 | PDF: https://issforum.org/to/jrt18-12 | Website: rjissf.org
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Contents
Introduction by Erik Voeten, Georgetown University
Review by Julia Gray, University of Pennsylvania
Review by Laurence R. Helfer, Duke University
Few subjects in the study of international institutions have moved as rapidly from the academic margins to the center of public debate as the withdrawal from international organizations. For decades, this research focused primarily on why states create, join, and delegate authority to multilateral institutions. Exit was generally treated as an infrequent and largely peripheral phenomenon. That perspective is no longer sustainable. On 7 January 2026, the United States directed its withdrawal, in a single presidential memorandum, from sixty-six international organizations and arrangements,[1] while a series of high-profile suspensions and withdrawals elsewhere has made exit central to contemporary debates about global governance. It is tempting to view these developments as evidence that the postwar institutional order is coming undone. Prominent commentary has done exactly that.[2]
Against this backdrop, Inken von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas have produced Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change (Cambridge University Press, 2025). As the three reviewers make clear, it is the most comprehensive treatment of International Organization (IO) exit to date. Drawing on an original dataset covering nearly 500 cases across 534 international organizations and 198 countries between 1914 and 2022, the authors make two important contributions. They analyze withdrawals, which are voluntary departures initiated by states, and suspensions, which are imposed by other members within a common analytical framework, treating both as forms of membership cessation. More importantly, they argue that exit is best understood not as the endpoint of institutional breakdown but as a costly bargaining strategy. Extending Albert Hirschman's classic exit-voice-loyalty framework,[3] they contend that governments threaten or undertake withdrawal when voice has failed, using the prospect of exit to induce institutional change.
This perspective yields several findings that challenge conventional wisdom. The authors argue that exit has not become steadily more common over time. Roughly two-thirds of withdrawals are motivated by efforts to renegotiate institutional arrangements rather than by populism or nationalism. Among the 145 withdrawal threats identified between 1980 and 2022, ninety-one percent were never carried out, while roughly half of the states that ultimately left later rejoined. Rather than marking institutional collapse, exit is generally rare, reversible, and embedded in bargaining processes. The statistical analysis is complemented by case studies of withdrawals, such as including the United States from the International Labor Organization, Japan from the International Whaling Commission, and the United Kingdom from the European Union, and suspensions involving Honduras, Syria, and Guinea. Together, these cases illustrate how preference divergence, shifts in bargaining power, and institutional design shape both the likelihood of exit and its consequences.
The reviewers are themselves leading scholars of institutional change and international cooperation, and each engages the book from a distinctive perspective. Julia Gray approaches the book from the perspective of international political economy and her own influential work on organizational “zombies,” institutions that persist formally while gradually ceasing to fulfill their original purposes.[4] She praises the book’s careful documentation of exit, its theoretical treatment of withdrawal as bargaining, and its analysis of reputational costs. At the same time, she asks whether visible exits provide a sufficiently representative window into the health of international cooperation. As she memorably observes, formal withdrawals may resemble “celebrity divorces” in that they are highly visible but unrepresentative of the everyday strains that characterize most institutional relationships. Gray suggests that dissatisfied states often pursue subtler strategies, including redirecting cooperation to informal institutions, hollowing out organizations from within, or simply allowing them to stagnate. These quieter forms of contestation, she argues, may ultimately matter more for the vitality of international organizations than formal withdrawal itself. She also questions the assumption that IOs begin as effective bargains, suggesting instead that many are designed to manage problems for which no fully satisfactory solutions exist.
Laurence Helfer, whose scholarship has shaped our understanding of treaty withdrawal and exit from international legal regimes,[5] likewise regards the book as a landmark contribution. He particularly highlights its decision to analyze withdrawals and suspensions together, its attention to “face-saving” exits, its treatment of exit as a multi-stage process, and its unusually broad empirical scope. His principal reservations concern the legal dimensions of withdrawal. Most importantly, Helfer argues that lawful withdrawal from an organization should be distinguished from violations of membership obligations, since the legal and reputational consequences of these actions differ. He also calls for greater attention to the legal architecture governing exit, including withdrawal clauses, notice periods, and domestic constitutional constraints. Examples ranging from South Africa and the International Criminal Court to Brexit and congressional constraints on NATO withdrawal illustrate how domestic institutions often shape governments’ ability to leave international organizations.
Stefanie Walter, whose work on Brexit has transformed our understanding of the broader implications of withdrawal from regional institutions,[6] also views the book's combined treatment of withdrawal and suspension as an important innovation and describes the underlying dataset as an invaluable resource for future research. Her comments focus on three broader questions. First, she argues that domestic political dynamics receive less attention than they deserve. The Brexit negotiations, for example, cannot be understood without considering party competition and domestic political incentives. Second, she asks whether exit should ultimately be viewed as a bargaining strategy or as evidence that bargaining has failed. The framework is compelling for withdrawal threats, she argues, but less obviously so for completed exits, which, the book itself shows, rarely achieve meaningful institutional reform and often end in renewed membership. Finally, Walter emphasizes that international organizations and remaining member states possess strategic agency of their own. Exit is not simply something that happens to organizations; it also reshapes the incentives and strategies of those who remain.
Taken together, the reviews point toward a common set of questions that extends beyond the book itself. Each highlights dimensions of institutional contestation that receive less attention in the authors’ framework: alternatives to exit, domestic political and legal constraints, and the strategic responses of organizations and remaining members. All three also ask how well historical patterns can guide us in understanding a political environment that may differ fundamentally from the one captured in the book's data.
Von Borzyskowski and Vabulas engage these critiques in a thoughtful and generous response. Rather than treating them as objections, they largely view them as opportunities to extend their research agenda. They readily acknowledge the importance of alternative forms of institutional contestation and note that ongoing work examines disruption through changes in IO funding. They likewise agree that domestic political institutions deserve greater attention, while emphasizing that their book deliberately foregrounds international dynamics that previous scholarship has often overlooked.
In responding to the individual reviews, the authors clarify several aspects of their argument. They reject a sharp distinction between bargaining strategy and bargaining failure, emphasizing that exit is a process whose outcome remains uncertain until withdrawal is completed. They stress that their theoretical framework is relational rather than state-centered, allowing organizations and other member states to exercise strategic agency. Responding to Helfer, they explain that their analogy between withdrawal and noncompliance concerns how political actors interpret these actions rather than their legal equivalence. They also note that debates over withdrawal from organizations that lack explicit exit clauses remain unresolved in international law and that several of Helfer's examples concern treaties rather than international organizations. In response to Gray, they argue that their theory generates probabilistic rather than deterministic predictions and maintain that the combination of statistical and qualitative evidence provides meaningful opportunities for empirical evaluation.
The exchange concludes by returning to the contemporary moment that motivates this symposium. The authors note that only five of the sixty-six institutions identified in the 2026 US announcement are formal intergovernmental organizations of the type examined in the book. Waiting periods, domestic political change, and the reputational costs of withdrawal all caution against treating every announced exit as inevitable. At the same time, they acknowledge that current developments may challenge several assumptions that have long underpinned the scholarship on international organizations, including growing emphasis on sovereignty, skepticism toward multilateral institutions, and declining confidence in the liberal principles that shaped much of the postwar order.
That tension between continuity and change animates this symposium. Exit from International Organizations provides the strongest empirical and theoretical account to date of why states leave international organizations and what those decisions accomplish. Whether the patterns documented in the book continue to characterize an evolving international order is the question that runs through the essays that follow. Readers will find not only an assessment of an important book, but also a productive conversation about institutional contestation, domestic politics, organizational agency, and the future of international cooperation. I thank the reviewers and the authors for contributing to that conversation.
