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CONCLUSION Agency Is Central Harald Müller The concluding chapter draws together the results of our empirical investigations with a view to understanding the interaction between the various factors influencing norm evolution or stagnation. It starts with a description of the various modes in which norm change takes place in the regimes (section two). It then considers the impact of norm conflicts, notably those with relation to justice issues, on norm development (section three). Section four explores the ambivalences of technology development by comparing the interplay between technology and regime development. How major international changes in the short, middle, and long term affected multilateral arms control regimes is the subject of section five. In section six, the different types of norm entrepreneurs are revisited with a view to understanding the particular ways in which they react to extrinsic developments and regime conflicts in dealing with norms. The final section discusses the theoretical implications of our findings, notably the relationship between “interests” and justice concerns, and outlines some ideas for further research. TRAJECTORIES OF NORM DYNAMICS In what ways have regimes and their norms evolved—or shrunk—in multilateral arms control? We can use as a template the landmark study by Thomas Gehring (1994) on the evolution of environmental regimes. He discovered a general pattern whereby these regimes were created as framework norms that left room for more specific norms, or “rules” in the original definition of regime theory (Krasner 1983). In the follow-up phase, such specifications then were added to the original treaty through a series of protocols, each of which tackled a particular subfield of the larger area that the regime was meant to cover. In multilateral arms control, there is only one regime following this trajectory : the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (ccw), which has [338] conclusion been left out of our study as it is usually assigned to the realm of traditional humanitarian law. The ccw was established as a framework that gained its operational political meaning through later protocols. None of our cases follows this pattern. True, we find one case of successful protocol making (the Additional Protocol on enhanced safeguards in the nuclear nonproliferation regime) and one failed attempt at amendment, the bwc. But the only remaining case then, the Additional Protocol, was not originally intended to amend the regime regularly by specific subinstruments to make it operational; instead, npt parties reacted to a discovery made in Iraq and the impossibility of tackling the challenge of clandestine nuclear programs within the boundaries of the established verification system. And indeed, it was not a protocol to the npt as such, but to the safeguards agreement nnws had concluded with the iaea. While similar in legal form to Gehring’s pattern of evolution, in substance it is different. For the salw PoA, the situation is reversed: here, the mode of change was similar to Gehring’s model in substance, but different in its legal form. Problems that were articulated during the negotiations or addressed in the ensuing PoA review meetings but could not be tackled within the PoA setting itself were delegated to groups of experts that would then work out guidelines or fully fledged legal instruments. Brokerage, marking and tracing, ammunition, and manpads were approached in that way. As a consequence, the salw regime, which is merely a loose, nonlegal agreement, proved fertile ground for instruments to regulate fields with a more restricted scope, but in a stronger form. Elsewhere, the need to respond to challenges has been a source of regime dynamics. The misgivings of some about weak bwc compliance procedures increased when the confidence building measures proved insufficient; improvements of the npt verification system and the emergence of the sophisticated cwc verification system made the bwc look outdated; we have a cross-regime effect here. The end of the Cold War offered the opportunity for a new initiative . All these impulses contributed to the failed quest for a compliance protocol in the bwc. The dangerous crisis of the regime after the failure of the protocol negotiations then moved parties to start the new intersessional process. Awareness of the problem served as a catalyst for both the Ottawa Convention and the salw PoA. Ottawa, so to speak, gave birth to the ccm, which was not established as a protocol to the existing convention but as a separate, freestanding treaty. The ccm closely followed the procedure that had helped establish the mbt; it covered a weapon that had very similar characteristics to antipersonnel land mines...

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