Multilateral Export Controls And International Regime Theory

This dissertation provides an explanation for recent standardization and growth of international export control regimes. I argue that neoinstitutionalist organization theory contributes to an explanation of these organizations which coordinate efforts to limit the spread of weapons-related technologies. The neoinstitutionalist approach claims that organizational structures are often not selected for maximal effectiveness at tasks such as controlling weapons-related exports. Rather, they are selected for their fit with norms shared within communities of organizations that interact regularly or share common tasks. The dissertation adapts and applies this literature to the subject of export control cooperation through process-tracing case studies of export control regimes such as CoCom and the Wassenaar Arrangement. I argue that a transnational community of organizations, or organizational field, has developed in the issue area of nonproliferation export controls. While extant theories of International Relations help explain the origins of international export control cooperation, they do not explain the extent or form such efforts have taken today. Shared norms in this issue area and copying of organizations perceived as successful explain the growth and standardization of multilateral nonproliferation regimes and international export control practices. These factors are highlighted by the sociological theories I draw upon. The case studies are constructed from archival data, interviews with policy makers, trade literature, and secondary sources.

Like many cold war artifacts, the West's export control policies and institutions are being reevaluated after the tumult in the communist world at the end of the 1980s. Policymakers and scholars are being forced to reexamine the premises of export control policy and the very concept of export controls as a tool of national security and foreign policy. This volume brings together expert scholars and government officials who provide contrasting perspectives and address the prospects for export controls. The contributors discuss the role and function of export control policies from a variety of perspectives--security, commerce, diplomacy, the European region, and that of the newly industrialized countries. Among the topics covered are the problems the United States and the Western export regime will face in the 1990s in light of changing international political alliances and dependencies, in defining strategic exports, in enforcing export controls, and the role of the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls. Contributors. Sumner Benson, Beverly Crawford, Richard t. Cupitt, Dorinda G. Dallmeyer, Paul Freedenberg, Martin J. Hillenbrand, Hanns-Dieter Jacobsen, Bruce W. Jentleson, Kevin J. Lasher, William J. Long, Janne Haaland Matlary, Jere W. Morehead, Henry R. Nau, Han S. Park, Kevin F. F. Quigley, Alen B. Sherr, Christine Westbrook

This volume provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of the Multilateral Non-Proliferation Export Control system and the national and international context within which it functions. Key features: "

International regimes have been a major focus of research in international relations for over a decade. Three schools of thought have shaped the discussion: realism, which treats power relations as its key variable; neoliberalism, which bases its analysis on constellations of interests; and cognitivism, which emphasizes knowledge dynamics, communication, and identities. Each school articulates distinct views on the origins, robustness, and consequences of international regimes. This book examines each of these contributions to the debate, taking stock of, and seeking to advance, one of the most dynamic research agendas in contemporary international relations. While the differences between realist, neoliberal and cognitivist arguments about regimes are acknowledged and explored, the authors argue that there is substantial scope for progress toward an inter-paradigmatic synthesis.

Proliferation of WMD technologies is by no means a new concern for the international community. Indeed, since the signing of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968, tremendous energies have been expended upon diplomatic efforts to create a web of treaties and international organisations regulating the production and stockpiling of WMD sensitive materials within states, as well as their spread through the increasingly globalised channels of international trade to other states and non-state actors. However, the intervention in 2003 by Western powers in Iraq has served as an illustration of the importance of greater understanding of and attention to this area of law, as disagreements over its content and application have once again lead to a potentially destabilising armed intervention by members of the United Nations into the sovereign territory of another member state. Other ongoing disputes between states regarding the character of obligations assumed under non-proliferation treaty instruments, and the effect of international organisations' decisions in this area, form some of the most contentious and potentially destabilising issues of foreign policy concern for many states. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of international law and organisations in the area of WMD proliferation. It will serve both as a reference for understanding the law as it currently exists in its political and economic context, as well as an analysis of areas in which amendments to existing law and organisations are needed.

This novel and original book examines and disaggregates, theoretically and empirically, operations of power in international security regimes. These regimes, varying in degree from regulatory to prohibitory, are understood as sets of normative discourses, political structures and dependencies (anarchies, hierarchies, and heterarchies), and agencies through which power operates within a given security issue area with a regulatory effect. In International Relations, regime analysis has been dominated by several generations of regime theory/theorization. As this book makes clear, not only has the IR Regime Theory been of limited utility for security domain due to its heavy focus on economic and environmental regimes, but it, too, heuristically suffered from its rigid pegging to general IR Theory. It is not surprising then that the evolution of IR Regime Theory has largely been mirroring the evolution of IR Theory in general: from the neo-realist/neo-liberal institutionalist convergence regime theory; through cognitivism; to constructivist regime theory. The commitment of this book is to remedy this situation by bringing together robust power analysis and international security regimes. It provides the reader with a theoretically and empirically uncompromising and comprehensive analysis of the selected international security regimes, which goes beyond one or another school of IR Regime Theory. In doing so, it completely abandons existing, and piecemeal, analysis of regimes within the intellectual field of IR based on conventional grand/mid-range theorization.