National referendums that challenge international institutions present a growing problem for international institutions.
This paper presents a framework for analyzing how these institutions and their member states respond to unilateral, voter-endorsed attempts to withdraw from, or renegotiate the terms of, existing international institutions. It argues that such “disintegration bids” pose a dilemma for the other member states: accommodating the challenging state’s demands creates political contagion risks and implies a redistribution of cooperation gains in the challenging country’s favor, but not accommodating these demands may lead to a loss of cooperation gains. Comparative case studies of nine referendum-endorsed disintegration bids demonstrate that this framework can explain the negotiation dynamics and outcomes of different voter-endorsed disintegration bids. A more detailed case study of the Brexit negotiations demonstrates that the accommodation dilemma also explains some of the variation in EU-27 Brexit negotiation positions.
Stefanie Walter is Full Professor for International Relations and Political Economy at the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. She received her PhD in Political Science from ETH Zurich for a dissertation on the political economy of currency crises. Before joining the faculty at the University of Zurich in 2013, she was a Fritz-Thyssen-Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and Junior Professor for International and Comparative Political Economy at the University of Heidelberg. Her research in international and comparative political economy examines distributional conflicts, political preferences and economic policy outcomes related to globalization, European integration, and financial crises.
Sara Hobolt is Sutherland Chair in European Institutions at the Department of Government, LSE.