IO survival politics: international organisations amid the crisis of multilateralism

ABSTRACTInternational organisations (IOs) have never been more authoritative and potentially agential while simultaneously faced more intense threats to their continued existence. Amid these dialectic conditions, this article identifies a novel type of behaviour: IO Survival Politics. IO Survival Politics occurs when senior institutional actors perceive the organisation to face an existential threat and, in response, employ extraordinary strategies to ensure the organisation’s continued existence. Survival Politics thus differs both in degree and kind from the ways in which secretariats exercise influence during conditions of normal policymaking. Two case studies illustrate the concept: (1) the European Commission’s response to Brexit and (2) NATO’s response to President Trump’s withdrawal threats. Drawing on 87 interviews with senior officials, the article shows that IO Survival Politics occurs across a range of diverse IOs in face of diverse threats and can be a crucial factor in determining the fate of IOs in crisis. By conceptualising IO Survival Politics, the article intends to open new avenues for research and advance scholarly understanding of IOs and the crisis of multilateralism.KEYWORDS: International organisationscrisesagencyNATOEUmultilateralism Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis article is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme [grant agreement No 802568].Notes on contributorsLeonard August SchuetteLeonard Schuette is a senior researcher at the Munich Security Conference. The bulk of the word for this article was done when he was a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford and PhD researcher at the University of Maastricht. The author is indebted to Hylke Dijkstra, Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Christian Kreuder-Sonnen, Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, and the participants at the ECPR Conference in Innsbruck (2022) and DVPW workshop on international organisations in Bonn (2022) for their most helpful comments.