Measuring the Effectiveness of Security Institutions and Tracing its Determinants: The Biological Weapons Non Proliferation Regime

Measuring the Effectiveness of Security Institutions and Tracing its Determinants: The Biological Weapons Non Proliferation Regime Are non proliferation regimes effective? If so, under which circumstances? Existing theoretical and empirical studies fall short of providing consistent indications of the constraining power of security institutions and non proliferation regimes on state decisions. On the one hand, proponents of regimes highlight the overall capacity of institutions to contain the number of proliferators. On the other hand, detractors maintain that regimes have little or no effect on state decision to pursue specific weapons. The empirical associations between framework conventions and the non proliferation of the weapons under provisions has proved unsatisfactory and weak. Moving from a broader idea of regimes in relations to an outcome-oriented notion of effectiveness, this paper develops a theoretical argument about the importance of networks of individual institutions (regime complexes) in regime analysis. I argue that regime-complex level data can drastically enhance our capacity to explain actual regime effectiveness, as well as the link between specific institutional features and non proliferation outcomes. I do so by introducing a new dataset, which includes information on several institutions parts of the biological non proliferation regime complex. I then illustrate the use of the new dataset by developing measures of state exposure to the regime-complex in terms of overall embeddedness, deepness and level of socialization experienced. Finally, I draw conclusions on the association between such measures and that of regime’s diachronic performance.