Denunciation, Breach Of Contract And Non-proliferation Mechanism

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the sole state ever strivingto get rid of international nuclear non-proliferation regime, claimed its withdrawalfrom the NPT in2003. This dissertation regards an international institution which isprone to "split up" as the external pressures. Weak and eccentric states will thus beincreasingly inclined to quit the institution due to surging but unequally distributedobligations required by institution system. Considering different choices that statesconfronted with "institutional" pressures make between abandoning its membershipand staying within institution (while still violating rules and principles), thedissertation seeks to analyze the correlation between state’s social network featuresand its behavior modes. The hypothetical correlation is supported by case studiesconcerning the behavior discrepancy among nuclear non-proliferation regime betweenperiphery-standing DPRK and relatively central, mainstream Iran from theperspective of social network. The dissertation also asserts that the commitmentimplementation of dominate state within the institution can exert positive effects onweak state’s behavior constraint, as is indicated by US-DPRK nuclear issueinteractions following DPRK’s withdrawal from the treaty.