International institutions are increasingly under attack from their member states, who embark on varying and sometimes escalating modes of contestation. At the same time, states’ negative institutional power, i.e. their opportunities to avoid undesired outcomes in international institutions, has been declining for some time. This paper claims that dissatisfied states’ negative institutional power endowments are key to understanding their varying contestation modes: the more limited (extensive) the negative institutional power of dissatisfied states in an institution, the more radical (moderate) modes of institutional contestation they will choose. We argue that, all else equal, states’ (1) inside options to prevent undesired outcomes within the institution and (2) their outside options to evade undesired outcomes by leaving the institution jointly condition whether they choose a strategy of voice, subversion, exit, or rollback to contest the dissatisfying institution. We assess the plausibility of our Negative Institutional Power Theory (NIPT) by means of four detailed case studies of the Trump Administration’s contestation of the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the Paris Agreement, and the Iran Nuclear Deal. We demonstrate the generalizability of our arguments by assessing our claims across eight additional instances of other dissatisfied powers’ contesting different international institutions. The twelve case studies demonstrate that negative power matters for states’ choice of institutional contestation modes. Our findings suggest that whether, in the future, international institutions will be increasingly challenged from within and outside, can be influenced by reforms that grant (or deny) states negative institutional power.

国际机构越来越多地受到来自其成员国的攻击，这些成员国开始采用各种不同的、有时甚至不断升级的争论模式。与此同时，国家的消极制度力量，即它们在国际机构中避免意外结果的机会，已经下降了一段时间。本文声称，不满国家的消极制度权力禀赋是理解其不同争论模式的关键：不满国家在一个制度中的消极制度权力越有限（广泛），它们就会选择越激进（温和）的制度竞争模式。我们认为，在其他条件相同的情况下，国家/地区 （1） 防止机构内部出现意外结果的内部选择，以及 （2） 他们通过离开机构来逃避意外结果的外部选择，共同条件他们是否选择发声、颠覆、退出或倒退的策略来对抗不满意的机构。我们通过特朗普政府对世界银行、世界贸易组织、巴黎协定和伊朗核协议的四个详细案例研究来评估我们的消极制度权力理论 （NIPT） 的合理性。我们通过评估其他不满大国与不同国际机构竞争的另外八个实例来证明我们论点的普遍性。这 12 个案例研究表明，负权力对于国家选择制度竞争模式很重要。 我们的研究结果表明，未来国际机构是否会受到来自内部和外部的日益挑战，是否会受到赋予（或否认）国家负面机构权力的改革的影响。