Chokepoints and Consensus: The Origins and Evolution of Multilateral Export Control Regimes
Creators: name: Huguley, Jack
Publisher: name: Brandeis University
Year: 2022
Subjects: Export control
Weapons of Mass Destruction

description: Proliferation of WMD occur by many means, and the patterns of this spread has been the focus of a great deal of scholarship in recent decades. Despite its ubiquity in the process of WMD spread historically, we know surprisingly little about how the civilian marketplace contributes to proliferation; furthermore, scholarship has to date underemphasized the importance of the international nonproliferation regime’s central mechanism for managing markets: export control regimes. This dissertation seeks to address both problems, developing a framework to better account for how states came to cooperate in coordinating export controls, and why they ultimately chose to do so through informal, secretive, standalone mechanisms known as multilateral export control regimes (Nuclear Suppliers Group, Australia Group, Missile Technology Control Regime). The central challenge marketplaces face for proliferation is one of competition imposing a collective action problem. As marketplaces become increasingly dense, the risk for sellers to compete for lucrative contracts risks downward pressure to international standards, which in this case typically results in weaker safeguards, contributing to the diminishing likelihood of success in generating the public good of nonproliferation. A complication emerges in the form of what I call the “dual dilemma,” as the tension between commercial benefits of exporting and the risk of proliferation yields the potential for nonproliferation advocates to doubly suffer: if a state wishes to resolve the export control gap through unilaterally raising its standards, it will fail; instead, other states in an unregulated market can simply fill the gap. What will occur, however, is that the unilateral actor will simply hinder its ability to subsequently influence market patterns by having selected itself out of the market. This is what makes the dilemma a “dual” one: if there are no export controls, proliferation will occur; if any given state attempts unilateral controls, their competitors will benefit, and the proliferation problem will remain unresolved – or may worsen.
description: The result is a dilemma which necessitates multilateral action, in an arena where states are likely to struggle to find an optimal coordination solution. To resolve this problem, I theorize that leading states – in particular, the United States, which has typically both been a leader in global nonproliferation efforts and has the highest unilateral standards (and thus incentives to internationalize those standards as the global baseline) – will promote mechanisms to ensure multilateral coordination of standards to close the export-driven proliferation gap based on the hope that doing so will prevent competition from generating downward pressure to those standards. I argue that they will do so through the generation of a cartel mechanism that begins with the smallest possible negotiating group of influential suppliers and may be extended beyond that group to secondary or emerging suppliers over time based on typical patterns identified by cartel theory. Furthermore, we can predict the form and design features of the ultimate regimes based on functionalist logic about the desired outcomes the negotiators envision.
description: Importantly, these patterns will come with a time lag: states will only respond to a market-based proliferation gap once a major “shock”—in the form of a proliferation event which reveals the extent of that gap—spurs actors to collectively overcome the mixed-motives incentives that had previously precluded cooperation. In these cases, regimes will be either formed or, if already in existence, revised. The timelines tend towards a “pattern of activism and neglect” or “punctuated equilibrium” familiar to organizational theories of regime management: after short flurries of intense activity during periods with high demand for regime adjustment, longer periods with little to no active management of the regime mechanism will follow. This will continue until another shock reveals a new or deeper gap to be resolved through subsequent collective activism.
description: Through process tracing methods, the dissertation attempts to combine theory building and theory testing in developing a framework to explain the patterns of multilateral export control regime formation and evolution over time, and then subsequently assessing the compatibility of the available historical evidence with that framework. Through the examination of declassified primary documents and interviews with policymakers, the project explores the NSG’s formation in 1974-76, its broadening and evolution in 1976-78, its period of disuse and subsequent revival in 1991-93, and extends the framework to two additional regimes in the MTCR and Australia Group. Though the project is not purely a theory-testing one, the available evidence does largely support the framework’s predictions; other elements provide insights that suggest opportunity for further theory building.