The democratic community and the expansion of international organizations

This project investigates the global conditions under which international organizations (IOs) expand their membership. It argues that IO growth is largely a function of the strength of democracies at the systemic level. The liberal rationalist theory of enlargement presented in this research is based on the premise that democracies benefit from promoting their unique standards of behavior. Democratic regimes externalize domestic norms of cooperation, consultation, and compromise to the international arena. These behaviors allow democracies to avoid the costs of war by promoting pacific conflict resolution. Democracies are thus motivated to persuade autocratic states to abide by the same rules of behavior, further decreasing the potential for war.; One method by which democracies can compel all states to mimic their behavior is by encouraging membership in IOs. International organizations entreat their members to cooperate and compromise on solutions to interstate conflict. And if these behaviors fail, IOs often encourage the use of third parties for peaceful dispute management. While cooperation and third party conflict resolution are behaviors that previous research attributes solely to democracies, this project shows that IOs persuade non-democracies to follow these same norms. Empirical analyses of territorial claims data reveal that increasing joint IO memberships encourage mixed and non-democratic dyads to manage conflict using third parties. Moreover, as democracies share more IO memberships, they become more likely to settle disputes bilaterally.; Norms of cooperation and institutional mechanisms of conflict management supplied by IOs can be considered club goods. For IOs to increase their membership and provide club goods to additional states, extant members must boost their contributions to the overall good. This condition is most likely fulfilled when the democratic community is strong, because it is more motivated to spread its norms and has more resources to devote to conflict management. Consequently, IOs are most apt to grow under a powerful democratic global community. The data analyses support the expectation that increasing strength of democracies at the systemic level encourages IOs to bring in new members. The project concludes that encouraging IO expansion is a more efficient means of promoting peaceful interstate behavior than imposing democracy abroad.