Organizing for Ontological Security: Rethinking Authoritarian International Organizations

Abstract Why do authoritarian countries form authoritarian international organizations (AIOs) when there is an abundance of democratic-dominant international organizations (DIOs) that provide similar forums of cooperation? Existing literature views AIOs in positivist terms. In this paper, I supplement the existing literature by bringing to bear the ontological dimension of authoritarian cooperation. Adopting the concept of ontological security, I theorize that establishing international organizations provides an avenue for authoritarian states to remedy their ontological insecurities—induced by critical events such as major geopolitical shifts—through routinizing relationships with strategic partners. Focusing on the case study of China in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), I draw from archival sources to conduct discourse analysis of selected texts and synthesize key themes. I propose that establishing the SCO was a Chinese initiative to alleviate the ontological insecurity that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The nature of this ontological insecurity was preemptive and derivative, but it nevertheless prompted the routinization of interstate relations and the construction of threats. Specifically, the SCO provided a forum for routinizing relations with states significant to China’s ontological security. The framework of ontological security yields important policy implications for democracies wishing to counter the proliferation of the authoritarian model.