Description
One of the most pervasive approaches to impede the spread of nuclear weapons has been the establishment of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The peculiarity of this regime is that it has not been based on a manageable number of clearly defined agreements and institutions as in the case of other issue areas. It has rather grown into an intricate maze of dozens of international treaties, intergovernmental organisations, conventions, protocols and informal institutions with overlapping membership and mandates. Surprisingly, the existing literature on nuclear non-proliferation has rarely made an effort to understand the potential ramifications of the complexity of this regime. By making use of the emerging concept of ‘regime complexity’ in International Relations, this paper attempts to close this gap in the literature. It asks specifically to what extent the existence of an increasingly dense network of interlinked and overlapping non-proliferation institutions and agreements has enabling or constraining effects on international efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. To this end, the paper examines, on the one hand, how the existence of a complex regime might have strengthened nuclear non-proliferation by specifying, for instance, relevant regime provisions and closing loopholes; on the other hand, the paper analyses how regime complexity may have had the opposite effect due to the inherent competition and contradictions between different regime elements. The paper concludes that regime complexity does strengthen non-proliferation on the whole, but that it has also created functional frictions that may have undermined specific non-proliferation efforts.
