Member states’ challenges to international organizations (IOs) are at the heart of the supposed crisis of our multilateral order – from the “African bias” debate surrounding the International Criminal Court, to the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” from the European Union, to Trump’s attacks on the World Health Organization during the COVID-19 pandemic. IOs are regularly challenged by their member states in different ways, ranging from verbal criticisms to withdrawals. But why are some IOs challenged more than others? An important – but so far largely theoretical – academic debate relates to the authority of IOs as an explanatory factor for why some face more challenges: Authoritative IOs may invite more challenges (for example, due to domestic contestation) or fewer challenges (due, in part, to the investment of member states and their greater capacity to resolve conflicts internally). Our article assesses these explanations using the Andersen-Gill approach for analyzing recurrent events of member states’ public criticisms and withdrawals. We do not find strong and consistent evidence that more authoritative IOs are more regularly challenged by their own member states. There is some evidence that authoritative IOs experience fewer withdrawals, but we find stronger evidence for alternative factors such as preference heterogeneity between members, the existence of alternative IOs, and the democratic composition of an IO’s membership. Our study is significant for scholarly debates and real-world politics, as it implies that granting IOs more authority does not make them more prone to member state challenges.

成员国对国际组织（IO）的挑战是我们多边秩序所谓危机的核心——从围绕国际刑事法院的“非洲偏见”辩论，到英国“脱欧”，再到特朗普的“脱欧”。 COVID-19 大流行期间对世界卫生组织的攻击。国际组织经常受到成员国以不同方式提出挑战，从口头批评到退出。但为什么有些 IO 比其他 IO 面临更多挑战？一个重要的——但迄今为止主要是理论上的——学术争论涉及国际组织的权威，作为为什么一些人面临更多挑战的解释因素：权威的国际组织可能会带来更多的挑战（例如，由于国内争议）或更少的挑战（由于，在部分是会员国的投资及其内部解决冲突的更大能力）。我们的文章使用安德森-吉尔方法来评估这些解释，以分析成员国公开批评和退出的反复事件。我们没有发现强有力且一致的证据表明越权威的国际组织更经常受到其成员国的挑战。有一些证据表明，权威国际组织的退出较少，但我们发现了更有力的证据来证明其他因素，例如成员之间的偏好异质性、替代国际组织的存在以及国际组织成员的民主构成。我们的研究对于学术辩论和现实世界的政治具有重要意义，因为它意味着授予国际组织更多权力并不会使它们更容易受到成员国的挑战。