The authority of international organizations (IOs) is generally assumed to drive their member states’ contestation even to the point that they terminate their membership. We provide a first systematic assessment of this authority thesis and suggest that the type of IO authority matters. IOs with pooled authority exert centrifugal effects on their membership since minorities are more likely confronted with adversarial majority decisions (pooling thesis). By contrast, IOs with delegated authority exert centripetal effects as they tend to accommodate the broader membership and seek to prevent membership termination by dissatisfied states (delegation thesis). A logistic regression analysis drawing on an original dataset of membership termination in major IOs in the period 1950-2023 supports our claim: Withdrawal is significantly more likely the more authority is pooled, and significantly less likely the more it is delegated. Our findings yield important implications for IO resilience in times of heightened contestation. Rather than driving exit, delegation can help to curb the escalation of contestation.