LAUSR

Why do states build multiple international institutions in the same policy domain? Prevailing theories emphasize the ability of institutions to improve cooperative outcomes. Yet significant coordination problems arise when institutions compete for authority in the same issue area. I argue that a contest for bargaining power leads states to strategically proliferate institutions. When their influence in existing venues is constrained, states construct new cooperative arrangements to augment their control over global governance. To test this this argument, I examine how the distribution of formal vote shares in the World Bank drives the proliferation of new development banks. I leverage a unique natural experiment associated with the allocation of votes at the Bretton Woods Conference to estimate the causal effect of states’ influence in the World Bank. Statistical analysis shows that the probability of institutional proliferation is significantly higher when power is misaligned in existing institutions. These results highlight how concerns about relative influence contribute to the increasing fragmentation of global governance. ∗Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08544. Email: [email protected]. I am grateful to Christina Davis, Julia Gray, Chris Humphrey, Kosuke Imai, Robert Keohane, Amanda Kennard, James Lee, Christoph Mikulaschek, Julia Morse, Abraham Newman, Kelsey Pratt, and Michael Tierney for valuable feedback on this project.