Angling for Influence: Institutional Proliferation in Development Banking Tyler Pratt∗ Yale University December 6, 2019 ∗Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Yale University. Email:
[email protected]. I am grateful to Eric Arias, Sarah Bush, Christina Davis, Julia Gray, Kosuke Imai, Robert Keohane, Amanda Ken- nard, James Lee, Melissa Lee, Christoph Mikulaschek, Julia Morse, and Kelsey Pratt for valuable feedback on this project. Abstract Why do states build new international organizations (IOs) in issue areas where many institutions already exist? Prevailing theories of institutional creation emphasize their ability to resolve market failures, but adding new IOs can increase state uncertainty and rule inconsistency. I argue that institutional proliferation can be explained by the failure of existing IOs to adapt to shifts in the distribution of state power. States expect decision-making rules within IOs to reflect their material power; when it does not, they construct new organizations that provide them with greater institutional control. To test this argument, I examine the proliferation of multilateral development banks since 1944. I leverage a natural experiment rooted in the allocation of World Bank votes at Bretton Woods to show that the probability of institutional proliferation is higher when power is misaligned in existing institutions. My results suggest that conflict over shifts in global power contribute to the fragmentation of global governance. 1 Introduction Since the end of the World War II, states have constructed international institutions at a breakneck pace. The number of formal international organizations (IOs) grew from less than a hundred in 1950 to over 300 by the year 2000.