Choosing to Be Constrained: Electoral Institutions and the Varieties of International Organizations

Scholars have been studying in what ways the design of international organizations (IOs) matters and under which conditions IOs can tie the hands of domestic politicians. All IOs are not alike; they differ in their degree of institutionalization. Given these differences in IO design, this paper contributes to explaining which type of democracy is more likely to choose being part of which type of IO. We find robust evidence that democracies with majoritarian electoral institutions are more likely to become members of IOs that are more highly institutionalized. At the same time, these same democracies are not more likely to become members of IOs that possess only a minimal degree of institutionalization. We posit that this is not a mere coincidence, but can be explained with political economy reasoning that pays close attention to institutional differences. Politicians in democracies with majoritarian electoral institutions are subject to strong pressures to give in to parochial demands. When deciding about which type of IOs to join, these politicians are likely to value those IOs that help them show to their constituents that their hands are tied. Our analysis, which covers 96 democracies from 1970 to 2005, indicates that besides electoral institutions, other institutional features of the domestic political system also exert a consistently significant effect on IO membership choices, namely presidentialism, age of democracy, and legal origin. We contribute to the political economy literature by explaining decisions to join IOs and also, more importantly, our empirical results highlight how IO design matters for these decisions.