Transgovernmental Networks and Nonproliferation

Abstract

Cold War-era international regimes to combat the proliferation of unconventional weapons face increasing doubts regarding their viability. These doubts mirror broader concerns about the efficacy of states and intergovernmental organizations in an era of globalization. Nonproliferation export controls-multilaterally coordinated national regulations on the cross-border transfers of technologies with weapons applications-present a test case for debates over the prospects for, and plausibility of, alternative models of global governance. If globalization theorists are correct in claiming that the efficacy of states has been significantly eroded, then national export controls and multilateral export control coordination should be increasingly ineffective. If, as more skeptical voices maintain, globalization presents little threat to the authority and effectiveness of states, then this should be evident in the export control field. A third perspective-transgovernmentalism-argues that while globalization presents significant challenges to states, they are increasingly and successfully addressing these challenges through the formation of government networks. Evidence from the issue-area of nonproliferation export control supports the transgovernmentalist perspective.THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: ALTERNATIVE SCENARIOSIt is widely claimed that globalization is transforming the international system, radically reducing the efficacy of the state.1 Driven by technological change, globalization entails increased transborder flows of technology, information, and people-flows that allegedly transcend the capacities of states to regulate their economies or control their borders. Globalization and the rise of electronic commerce may undermine states' ability to levy taxes on economic activity and therefore to sustain themselves, requiring collective arrangements in a core area of national sovereignty. Global markets and financial flows create economic pressures that produce policy convergence, variously seen as leading to greater economic efficiency or a race to the bottom. Globalization also generates new security challenges, less tied to borders and state control. These include new forms of civil conflict based on global flows and financing. Economic globalization combined with civil or ethnic conflict can provoke and exacerbate conflicts. And the combination of technological diffusion and economic liberalization undermines efforts to control trade in arms and related technologies, and to control goods and technologies that can be used in the production of unconventional weapons and their delivery systems.2According to this broad perspective, states are being replaced as the primary source of governance. Neomedievalists argue that states will be largely displaced by networks of nonstate actors-international institutions, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and transnational corporationscollectively comprising a global civil society. They contend that globalization and the information revolution have altered the environment of states and nonstate actors in ways that enhance the effectiveness of networks and reduce that of hierarchies. Hierarchical states are therefore in decline, as their power shifts up, down, and sideways, to international organizations, local governments and substate actors, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and global civil society.3The result, according to proponents of the neomedievalist perspective, will be something akin to high-tech feudalism.4 Authority relations will be reconfigured on a nonterritorial basis with overlapping authorities over different functional issue-areas exercised by different types of actors at different levels. Such a power shift can generate a gray zone-a combination of weak states, open borders, lack of controls and a ready market of buyers and sellers of weapons of mass destruction.5 Thus, globalization renders nuclear and other unconventional weapons merely another part of a global trading system beyond the control of states. …