Power, knowledge, interests: Understanding the emerging regime to control small arms and light weapons

Why do states cooperate on some issues, and not others in international relations? The puzzle of why small arms remained "forgotten weapons" on the global agenda for so long is pieced together in this dissertation. We also explore the emergence of a fledgling regime on controlling small arms and light weapons, encapsulated in the United Nations Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects (2001).; The hypothesis advanced in this dissertation is that three variables (power, knowledge, and interests) are chiefly responsible for producing a set of global controls on the small arms issue. Such a hypothesis arises out a conviction that the creation of regimes for all global issues can be explained by the development of these three variables. Alternately, an absence of a regime can be accounted for by the lack of one or more of these variables. The presence of the respective driving forces is sought in two periods: before the end of the Cold War and after the end of the Cold War, including the post September 11 period (1990 to 2005). We aim to show that those variables favourable to the creation of a regime were not developed in the first period under study, an interval of time characterized by an unwillingness on the part of nation-states to invest in a regime. Only in the second period did the variables appear, coinciding with the dawn of cooperation on the small arms issue.; After developing power as a variable (we state that great power interest will determine the general mould of feasibility for the regime), we note that major power interest on small arms control was lacking in the first period under study. Great power interest appeared mixed in the second period. In the next chapter, we analyze knowledge through the lens of "knowledge collectives" to see if a progression of ideas that might have caused states to learn about the problems posed by small arms and light weapons occurred. Indeed, we find that a knowledge collective formed and diffused information at a time when states began to act on small arms. Finally, the variable of interest is explained within a neoliberal framework of prenegotiation bargaining. Only when factors related to the fear of cooperation (e.g. solution-salience, distribution of gains and enforcement issues) are overcome do we find that the prospects for regime creation appear more positive.; This dissertation firmly espouses a pluralist view of regime theory in which insights from realism (power), liberalism (knowledge) and neo-liberalism (interests) are considered, along with their interplay.