Research has demonstrated how membership in more democratic regional intergovernmental organizations (ROs) can strengthen the prospects for democracy. However, a significant number of ROs are dominated by autocratic members who have quite different preferences: to limit democratic contagion and consolidate authoritarian rule against democratic challengers. We outline a menu of mechanisms through which ROs with authoritarian memberships might have pernicious effects on the prospects for democratic rule. We use cross-national quantitative analyses to demonstrate that membership in more deeply authoritarian international organizations is associated with autocratization. We supplement the quantitative results with an analysis of twenty-nine of the most authoritarian ROs and illustrative case studies. The multi-method approach strengthens inference by showing that authoritarian international organizations do in fact engage in behaviors inimical to democratic rule.

中文翻译：

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稳定威权统治：国际组织的作用

研究表明，加入更民主的区域政府间组织 (RO) 如何加强民主前景。然而，相当数量的 RO 由具有截然不同偏好的专制成员主导：限制​​民主传染并巩固专制统治以对抗民主挑战者。我们概述了一系列机制，具有独裁成员身份的 RO 可能通过这些机制对民主统治的前景产生有害影响。我们使用跨国定量分析来证明，更深入的专制国际组织的成员资格与专制化有关。我们通过分析 29 个最专制的 RO 和说明性案例研究来补充定量结果。