| Nonproliferation studies tend to treat "rollback" and "restraint" identically as they both seek nonproliferation. The two, however, represent the difference between change and continuity. A state's reversal of its nuclear program that already crossed the nuclear threshold is a great change whereas a non-nuclear state's affirmation not to develop nuclear weapons is continuation of nonproliferation. Reiss (1995), Paul (2000), and Solingen (2007) have contributed significantly to answering the rollback question. However, a central piece of puzzle remains missing, that is, the causal spark that led those states to go another step of renouncing nuclear weapons when they could have remained proliferated.;To fill the gap this dissertation proposes a diversionary-compliance hypothesis. It is based on a premise that what is deemed extremely valuable as a nuclear weapon is never forsaken, but only exchanged with something of an equivalent value---a leader's political life. When a leader confronts a legitimacy crisis, he/she gestures international cooperation by renouncing nuclear weapons in the expectation of receiving international help for his/her political survival. Renunciation thus is an act of diversion as the primary objective is more survival than nonproliferation. Simply put, nuclear weapons are likely to remain intact without a legitimacy crisis.;A leader has three options when faced with a domestic problem: crackdown, diversionary-war, and diversionary-compliance. What steers a leader to diversionary-compliance is when three conditions are present: a legitimacy crisis, hegemonic pressure, and a domestic-international aligned opposition. Of these conditions, the aligned opposition is vital in that the leader confronts two adversaries at once in a situation where seeking international cooperation becomes more advantageous for survival than seeking other options.;The hypothesis is compared with two alternative explanations---the realist/security view and the identity/norms view---and tested on five cases by historical process tracing: South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and India. The results show that the hypothesis was confirmed by three cases (South Africa, South Korea, and India). It particularly gave a better answer to the South Korean case where two alternative explanations failed. For the cases of Argentina and Brazil, however, the alternative explanations fared better. |
