International narcotics control: Norms, systems and regimes

Since the Hague Convention of 1912, nations have rarely countenanced the export of illegal narcotics to other nations, despite vast revenues at stake, and despite a history of doing so throughout the 19th century. This dissertation offers an explanation for this largely understudied fact. It also addresses a shortfall in the political science literature by asking how and why the International Drug Control Regime (IDCR) arose, how it has developed, and under what circumstances states comply or fail to comply with its strictures.; The dissertation argues that both ideology and state interest are important factors in explaining the politics of illegal drugs. While typically such approaches to political science run parallel to each other, it is useful to combine the two in explaining a dynamic system like the international drug control regime, in which powerful state norms legitimate the cooperative use of money, force, and diplomacy to combat a rapidly changing, transnational problem with broad implications for international security. In its analysis of drug control as a norm, the second chapter applies constructivist analysis to explain the impact of ideas and social constructs upon the international system. This chapter relies on several historical sources to describe how anti-opium activists were able to build a successful international activist community which pressured Britain to abandon the opium trade. The third chapter explains the relative power concerns that kept nations from abandoning the trade unilaterally. It uses a realist analysis to illustrate how self-interested, security-seeking nations built the regime that exists today.; In describing the IDCR, the dissertation disaggregates norms and material factors from the legal and institutional phenomena that form the regime. The dissertation examines both material and ideational factors in explaining the growth and development of the IDCR. It also details counter-initiatives developed by drug traffickers to establish markets and avoid prosecution. The fourth chapter focuses on the uses of branding as a means of employed by large-and small-scale traffickers and dealers to introduce law and predictability to a low-security environment, when merchants lack recourse to the state as a provider of security and an arbitrator of disputes.; The dissertation concludes with an examination of the conditions under which states defect from the IDCR's directives. It considers the theoretical significance of the International Drug Control Regime, the likely future of the IDCR as well as the policy implications for international security of the IDCR's strengths and weaknesses.