Chapter 8 traces the dynamics of our argument about the causes and consequences of IO suspensions with three qualitative case studies: Honduras’ suspension from and return to the OAS (2009–2011), Syria’s suspension from and return to the Arab League (2011–2023), and Guinea’s suspension from ECOWAS (2021). Honduras’ and Guinea’s suspensions both occurred after coups d’état violated IO commitments. Syria’s suspension was in response to gross human rights violations that stemmed from government-sponsored violence. Each case shows how IO members used suspension as a multilateral diplomatic sanction, signaling peer disapproval, to push states to halt/change behavior. The suspensions catalyzed other international actors to also punish the countries’ political backsliding as seen through follow-on economic sanctions and the withholding of ambassadors. Each of the suspended countries engaged in stigma management after their forced exits. But the cases also show a range of different outcomes: Honduras returned to the OAS after meeting all of the IO’s stipulations for reinstatement; Syria was readmitted to the Arab League even without behavior changes (largely because of shifts in other members’ domestic politics and an intractable stalemate); and Guinea remains suspended from ECOWAS at the time of writing.

The distinctive features of regional organizations arise from the fact that they strive to integrate a smaller set of countries but they often aim to reach across a wider range of substantive issues than the other international organizations in this book. The regional organizations in this chapter are vastly different from each other but they face the same challenge of integrating members on an almost limitless range of policies. They approach this challenge diversely: the EU has created powerful central authorities, including a bureaucracy and a legal hierarchy between the center and the member states; in contrast, the AU, ASEAN, and the OAS leave most powers of decision in the hands of meetings of their heads of government. These are more typical of regional international organizations in that they could in theory make forceful collective decisions but in practice their main contribution is as a forum in which intergovernmental negotiation takes place.