Nuclear cooperation with non-NPT member states? An elite-driven model of norm contestation

ABSTRACT

Supporters of the nuclear nonproliferation regime argue that international agreements, power politics, and emerging standards of legitimacy have generated a robust nuclear nonproliferation norm. This optimism is mirrored in early social constructivist international relations theory, which emphasizes the constitutive and regulatory power of international norms. Conversely, this article explores how recent developments in global politics and international relations theory may show how vested players can change normative architectures. This project develops a model of elite entrepreneurship in norm change that includes stages of redefinition and substitution through contestation. It conducts a plausibility probe of the model in the development of the 2008 U.S.–India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, a case of U.S.-driven norm change. The article concludes that this alternative agency-based model lends insights on what may be a continuous, and consequential, evolution of the nuclear nonproliferation norm.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear nonproliferation
• constructivism
• U.S.–India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement
• norm change

Acknowledgements

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Nuclear Norms in Global Governance Project in Monterey, CA, March 2014. He received valuable comments on the manuscript from Maria Rost Rublee, Avner Cohen, Jeffrey Knopf, Nina Tannenwald, Scott Sagan, Carmen Wunderlich, William Walker, Steven Lee, Lyndon Burford, and the anonymous reviewers for Contemporary Security Policy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jeffrey S. Lantis is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Global & International Studies Program at The College of Wooster. His teaching and research specializations include international security, norms, strategic culture, nuclear nonproliferation, and foreign policy analysis. A former Fulbright Senior Scholar in Australia, Lantis is author of recent books, including Arms and Influence: Technology Innovations and the Evolution of International Security Norms (Stanford University Press, 2016) and United States Foreign Policy in Action (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), and editor of Strategic Cultures and Security Policies in the Asia-Pacific (Routledge, 2016). In addition, Lantis has published numerous book chapters and articles in academic journals including Foreign Policy Analysis, International Security, and International Studies Perspectives.

Additional information

Funding

This article has benefited from funding under U.S. Institute of Peace Annual Grant, Nuclear Norms in Global Governance #160-12F, Australian National University, and the Monterey Institute of International Studies.