EFFORTS TO CONTROL the spread of and eventually eliminate biological (BW), chemical (CW), and nuclear weapons (NW) are referred to under the general heading “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) regimes. Although the effects of and the opportunities to defend against these types of weapons differ widely, the global discourse has lumped them together as indiscriminate, cruel, treacherous, and having long-term consequences for survivors. Existing regimes prohibit BW and CW, but not NW. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) have sophisticated verification regimes while the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) lacks any. The CWC has...

THE DECADE OF “HUMAN SECURITY” was in many respects constitutive for humanitarian arms control in the 1990s (Shaw, MacLean, and Black 2006, 3). The change in security policy perspectives that unfolded during this period encouraged new forms of arms control and disarmament. The 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty (MBT), also called the Ottawa Convention, the 2001 Action Programme on Small Arms (PoA), and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) were established. These instruments seek to limit illicit transfers of arms, restrict their indiscriminate use, and deal with the deadly consequences of war. The three regimes share certain characteristics that...

WAR IS, AS MARTIN VAN CREVELD (1991, 1) puts it, “completely permeated by technology and governed by it.” Technological innovations, be it through increasing precision, lethality and range of weapons, or decreased defensibility against them, have led to an increase in the destructiveness of war that culminated in the “mechanised slaughter of the twentieth-century conflicts” (Monin and Gallimore 2002, 41). However, warfare has been affected not only by technological developments—international norms regulating and prohibiting the use and possession of certain weapons have accompanied it as long as has technological innovation. Especially in the second half of the twentieth century,...

BOTH LONG-TERM TRENDS in the international system and individual events, shocks, or traumas of a certain magnitude hold potential for triggering norm change in arms control regimes. They might challenge dominant ideas and ideological paradigms, put new issues on the table that call for collective action, alter cost-benefit calculations of member states, or shake the international balance of power, and thus impact on both agency and structure. While scholars often invoke exogenous events as explanations for institutional change, such events can also inhibit change within a given normative structure: “Exogenous shock remains an indeterminate explanation” and thus cannot be used...

THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS conventionally regard great powers as the most important actors in international politics. Research on norms, however, has placed little emphasis on their activities (see chapter 1). Research on great powers, in turn, has for the most part neglected the role of norms and focused mainly on material aspects. Highlighting the role of the normative fabric of the international system in this volume compels us to look at the roles great powers play as norm entrepreneurs in arms control regimes.

The theory of hegemonic stability (first articulated by Kindleberger 1973) makes the robustness of norms contingent on...

THE PHRASE GOOD INTERNATIONAL CITIZENSHIP was coined by former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans in the late 1980s (Hanson 1999, 1). It denotes states that conduct an ethically motivated foreign policy that blends realist with idealist prescriptions and places internationalism and the “common good” ahead of the pursuit of narrow material interests (e.g., Linklater 2007, 63). In Evans’s understanding, such a foreign policy would be inextricably linked with activism and leadership in international affairs (Hanson 1999, 1, 7–9). While formulated as a doctrine for Australian foreign policy, the term was later adopted by academics who applied it to other...

THE CONCEPT OF NORM ENTREPRENEURSHIP has so far remained restricted to analyzing actors engaged in the promotion of supposedly “good” norms and working toward reproducing or incrementally reforming the prevalent normative order with a view to enhance its quality and efficiency (see chapter 1)—their attitude may thus be described as affirmative. Yet, as “agents of social change” (Björkdahl 2002, 45), norm entrepreneurs often take an oppositional stance to, express dissent from, and advocate a more or less radical modification of the existing normative structure. Depending on the purpose of the intended change, oppositional norm entrepreneurship may take various forms....

NO STUDY OF NORM ENTREPRENEURS would be complete without considering the role of non state actors who have acquired a reputation as serious players in International Relations (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Björkdahl 2002, 45–51). The growth of transnational civil society, as well as international institutions above the state level, and its international impact has been one of the characteristics of the era of globalization. The term denotes, for our field, international governmental organizations (IGOS) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOS) (Simmons and Martin 2001). Whereas the influence of NGOS and individuals for the evolution of norms has been acknowledged for a...