Title: Outside options and change in international organizations
Description: Existing work on international organizations has provided limited insight on generalizable processes of institutional change. In this dissertation, I propose a theoretical framework that explains variations in distributional institutional change according to the attractiveness of outside options across policy areas. International organizations in policy areas characterized by unattractive outside options leave dissatisfied states with limited leverage and therefore tend to exhibit rigidity and path dependency. In contrast, international organizations in policy areas with attractive outside options tend to change relatively smoothly in response to underlying shifts in state interests and capabilities. To test my propositions, I offer a quantitative analysis of voting shares in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank as well as case study evidence from a range of international policy areas. I also examine the substantive effects of institutional rigidity by analyzing quantitatively and qualitatively the consequences of Japan's lack of influence over the lending policies of the International Monetary Fund.