IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v114y2020i2p342-355_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Arms Control Is So Rare

Author

Listed:
  • COE, ANDREW J.
  • VAYNMAN, JANE

Abstract

Arming is puzzling for the same reason war is: it produces outcomes that could instead be realized through negotiation, without the costly diversion of resources arming entails. Despite this, arms control is exceedingly rare historically, so that arming is ubiquitous and its costs to humanity are large. We develop and test a theory that explains why arming is so common and its control so rare. The main impediment to arms control is the need for monitoring that renders a state’s arming transparent enough to assure its compliance but not so much as to threaten its security. We present evidence that this trade-off has undermined arms control in three diverse contexts: Iraq’s weapons programs after the Gulf War, great power competition in arms in the interwar period, and superpower military rivalry during the Cold War. These arms races account for almost 40% of all global arming in the past two centuries.

Suggested Citation

  • Coe, Andrew J. & Vaynman, Jane, 2020. "Why Arms Control Is So Rare," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 114(2), pages 342-355, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:114:y:2020:i:2:p:342-355_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S000305541900073X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Oriana Skylar Mastro & David A Siegel, 2023. "Talking to the enemy: Explaining the emergence of peace talks in interstate war," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 35(3), pages 182-203, July.
    2. Sarita Rosenstock, 2023. "Beneficence Signaling in AI Development Dynamics," Papers 2305.02561, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:114:y:2020:i:2:p:342-355_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.