Richard T. Cupitt

COCOM Is Dead, Long Live COCOM: Persistence and Change in Multilateral Security Institutions

Members of the Co-ordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) agreed to disband this ‘economic arm of NATO’ as of March 1994. Despite the demise of COCOM, member states agreed to continue applying their existing export control policies and, in December 1995, replaced COCOM with the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. Such actions are in contrast to conventional views about a likely decline in co-operation among COCOM members with the end of the Soviet threat. After providing a brief history of COCOM operations, we derive six categories of multilateral co-operative behaviours and assess evidence for COCOM in each category for two five-year periods, 1985–89 and 1990–94. We find that multilateral co-operation in this security institution not only increased in most categories in the last years of the Cold War, but increased in every category after 1989. We then review the possible explanations for the increase in co-operation, and find that the emergence of a liberal community identity among COCOM members explains this outcome better than more conventional theoretical approaches.

The (IM)Morality of international governmental organizations

In this article, the authors apply standard population statistics to assess the durability of conventional international governmental organizations (IGOs) in the international system for the years 1865–1989. Following a brief discussion of IGOs and why institutions tend to persist (with examples from the literature on international relations, the U.S. bureaucracy, and international business), the authors examine infant mortality, average age at death, median age, the birth rate, and the death rate for conventional IGOs. The authors find that all of these measures vary considerably over time. The authors conclude that both neorealist and institutionalist expectations about the durability of international cooperation are realized in different eras, suggesting that both approaches are time‐bound and misspecify fundamental theoretical issues.

The Determinants of Nonproliferation Export Controls: A Membership-Fee Explanation

Dr. Richard T. Cupitt is Associate Director and Washington Liaison for the Center for International Trade and Security of the University of Georgia. In 2000-2001 he also served as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and assisted in studies on reforming U.S. and multilateral export controls. His most recent book is Reluctant Champions: U.S. Presidential Policy and Strategic Export Controls. Dr. Suzette R. Grillot is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Academic Programs at the University of Oklahoma. She is co-editor of and contributor to the books Arms on the Market: Reducing the Risk of Proliferation in the Former Soviet Union and Arms Control and the Environment: Preventing the Perils of Disarmament (forthcoming 2001). Dr. Yuzo Murayama is Professor of Economic Security at Osaka University of Foreign Studies in Japan. He specializes in technology-related issues such as export controls, technology transfer, and missile defense. His most recent book on technology policy won the 2000 Fujita Future Management Prize.

New strategies for the nuclear suppliers group (NSG)

Membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has grown rapidly in the past decade. If continued, this rate of growth threatens to condemn the NSG to years of stalemate and stagnation as it includes states with significantly divergent interests. In contrast, cooperation between NSG members and nonmember states could increase substantially without threatening the workings of the NSG itself. The authors argue that keeping the NSG as an effective tool in the effort to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons depends on the ability to differentiate between three types of states: (1) states unwilling or unable to cooperate with NSG members on nonproliferation issues, including export controls; (2) states able and willing to cooperate with NSG members on such issues; and (3) states able and willing to coordinate their nonproliferation export control policies with NSG members. The authors argue that NSG members should work with the latter two types of states, but that different strategies are required for eac...

British Hegemony and Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1815-1939

In this paper, we examine some competing explanations of the Pax Britannia, the long era of relative peace that marks the 19th century. We test hypotheses derived from balance of power theory and from theories of hegemonic order (including the hegemonic stability theory of Gilpin, the political long-cycle theory of Modelski, Thompson and their associates, world systems theory, and the economic long-cycle theory of Kondratieff) regarding the occurrence of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) for 1815-1939. Using indicators of British economic and military capacity, the regression analyses indicate that the rise and fall of British military and economic capacity associates inversely some measures of major power MIDs. From the theoretical models of phases of hegemonic order, we find no support for the implications of the Gilpin and the World systems models. Support for the double cobweb model (Modelski) exists, but the model is very sensitive to a single data point. Finally, eras of world economic expansion (from the Kondratieff model) appear to be positively associated with the incidence of MIDs.

Foreign political risk assessment: government instability and nontariff barriers to trade

While many political risk assessments depict government instability as a key variable in estimating foreign business risk, evidence linking government instability and change in policies affecting international businesses is limited and mixed. Is the focus on government instability misplaced? Using a pooled cross-sectional time series design, this study examines the relationship between two measures of government instability (turnover in the head of government and turnover among relevant cabinet ministers) and the use of hard-core non-tariff barriers to imports on a quarterly basis for the countries of South America from 1981 to 1985. Though cabinet turnover appears to bear no relationship with policy change, the findings indicate that turnover in the head of government has a strong positive association with both protectionism and liberalization. This suggests that this kind of government instability is an important element in assessing foreign political risk.