IGO Membership Selection

“Screening out Risk: IGOs, Member State Selection, and Interstate Conflict,” 2015, International Studies Quarterly (with Daniela Donno and Bruce Russett) {paper abstract}

I also examine the effect of “context” in terms of state membership in international organizations (IOs), in a joint project with Daniela Donno and Bruce Russett. In the interstate conflict literature, proponents of the Kantian peace argue that shared IO memberships will promote cooperation and reduce the propensity for militarized conflict between states. The benefits associated with membership explain why states desire to join IOs, but we realized that the supply side of the story has been neglected. On what basis do IOs select new member states? Our insight is that IOs screen based on potential members’ ex ante level of security threat. To answer our question, we develop a new dataset containing state-IO pairs instead of state-state pairs, the norm in interstate conflict research.

We find that, in general, IOs admit less risky states as new members. Institutional characteristics of the organization may further affect its propensity to screen. Highly institutionalized organizations and those with security mandates appear to be among the most cautious. Additionally, when we correct for selection, we find that IOs favor potential members that are “friendly” with current member states, pointing to the importance of correcting for selection when investigating the effect of IOs on interstate conflict.