When member states contest policymaking in international organizations, some international public administrations (IPAs) react in a conciliatory way while others are adversarial. This article argues that IPAs’ dependence on contesting states, their policymaking authority, and affectedness from contestation shape communicative responses. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 32 cases of contestation by the Trump administration indicates that IPAs yield when they are constrained by dependence on the United States or have no incentive to defend themselves. IPAs fend off contestation when they are unconstrained and incentivized by attacks on an international organizations’s polity, the bureaucracy, or policies in whose making they were substantially involved.