Inken Von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas, "Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change” (Cambridge UP, 2025)

About this episode

The episode discusses the reasons and implications of states exiting international organizations, based on the new book by Von Borzyskowski and Vabulas.

Why do states exit international organizations (IOs)? How often does exit from IOs – including voluntary withdrawal and forced suspension – occur? What are the effects of leaving IOs for the exiting state? Despite the importance of membership in IOs, a broader understanding of exit across states, organizations, and time has been limited. Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change (Cambridge UP, 2025) addresses these lacunae through a theoretically grounded and empirically systematic study of IO exit. Von Borzyskowski and Vabulas argue that there is a common logic to IO exit, which helps explain both its causes and consequences. By examining IO exit across 198 states, 534 IOs, and over a hundred years of history, they show that exit is driven by states' dissatisfaction, preference divergence, and is a strategy to negotiate institutional change. The book also demonstrates that exit is costly because it has reputational consequences for leaving states and significantly affects other forms of international cooperation. NOTE: This book was just awarded the 2026 Chadwick Alger prize for best book in international organizations from the…

People in this episode

Host: Eleonora Mattiacci

Guests: Felicity Vabulas, Inken Von Borzyskowski

Topics covered

• international organizations
• state exit
• institutional change
• diplomatic history
• international cooperation

Keywords

• international organizations
• exit
• negotiation
• diplomatic history
• reputation
• cooperation
• states

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cambridge UP, International Studies Association

Books & works: Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change

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