Font Size: a A A

Informal Regimes In International Nonproliferation System

Posted on:2008-03-21Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:H S LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116360242472988Subject:International relations
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
In the community of international relations scholars, there are two arguments concerned about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. One is the school of optimists, the other is the school of pessimists. Since the logic of deterrence which the optimists rely on has many internal predicaments, the pessimistic theory of proliferation of WMD is widely accepted in international community. In order to prevent the proliferation of WMD, a series of international regimes were built in international community. The regimes consist an international nonproliferation system.According to the nature of the commitment relationship between member states, international regime can be categorized into formal regime and informal one. The member states of formal regime reach a legal commitment relationship by contract. They intend to build a legally binding relationship on rights and obligations between them. By contrast, the member states of informal regimes build a political or moral commitment relationship between them. The substantial difference between formal regime and informal regime is whether the member states do or do not intend to build a legally binding relationship on rights and obligations. Based on this criteria, multilateral export control regimes in the second level and proliferation security initiative in the third level of international nonproliferation system are informal regimes. The research question of this dissertation is why the nonproliferation regimes in the second and third level choose the informal arrangement, and what's the impact of the informal arrangement on the effectiveness of these regimes..The choice of institutional form of international regime/international institution is a frontier research program in the theories of international institutions. In the literature of international relations theory, there are four kinds of explanations to the question why international regimes choose informal institutional form. They explain the research question from the perspectives of issue characteristics, the specific advantages of informal regimes, transaction costs among states and the high tendency of international compliance among democratic states. The existing theories can not explain the question of why some international non-proliferation regimes choose informal institutional form reasonably.This dissertation explains the causes of the informal choice of nonproliferation regimes from the four aspects below under the theoretical framework of liberalism. Firstly, The nonexistence of highly influential organized social groups who favored international cooperation in the domestic politics of member states permited the necessary environment for decision makers' preferences on informal regime; Secondly, The decision makers of the member states preferred informal regime in order to insulate the highly influential organized interest groups from the policy process and avoid the negative impact on the legally binding obligations which are written in the formal nonproliferation regimes and international regimes in other issue areas; Thirdly, the homogenuity of policy preferences of the initial member states in the issue area of nonproliferation allowed they did not need adjust the preferences of informal regimes to strengthen the credibility of commitment, therefore, informal regime became the common institutional choice; Fourthly, because of the non-exludablity of the cooperation issues, the collective choice of informal regime is highly stable, which ensures the emergence and maintenance of the collective choice of informal regime.Multilateral export control regimes and proliferation security initiative as informal regimes play a positive role in promoting the international cooperation rapidly in practice. However, under the informal arrangement, these regimes confront some weakness and predicaments: the non-bindingness of regime compliance, the ambiguity of regime regulations, the non-congruence of regime object to the member scope, and the constraint of informal arrangement to the expansion of universal international norm. So, under the current conditions, the regimes can not satisfy the demand for governance of international community on the proliferation of WMD.The research of this dissertation has the policy implications below. Because the informal arrangement can hardly be changed under the current conditions, the more feasible way to reform is to push the institutionalization of the decision-making procedures of these informal regimes. At the same time, international community should eradicate or mitigate the relevant countries' demand of developing WMD in response to security dilemma from the demand-side.
Keywords/Search Tags:International Regime, Nonproliferation, Formal Regime, International Security
PDF Full Text Request
Related items