Does Democratization Make States Join or Form International Organizations?

Why do democratizing states form and join international organizations? We make the case that democratizing states initially have good reasons to establish new IOs instead of joining existing ones. Democratizing states face different governance problems than established democracies, and existing IOs often do not provide solutions to these problems. Additionally, established democracies may initially hesitate to allow democratizing states to join the most lucrative existing IOs. Quantitative analysis shows that democratization has a strong and consistent effect on the probability of forming a new IO, but not on the probability of joining an existing IO. Interestingly, this difference holds even for IOs that are designed to enable credible commitment. More detailed analyses show that this finding holds for most issue areas, and reveals substantial differences between the IOs that democratizing states join versus form. Qualitative analysis also reveals that the causal mechanisms we have highlighted exerted inuence on outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]