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The groundbreaking UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which went into effect in 2014, sets legally binding standards to regulate global arms exports and reflects the growing concerns toward the significant role that small and major conventional arms play in perpetuating human rights violations, conflict, and societal instability worldwide. Many countries that once staunchly opposed shared export controls and their perceived threat to political and economic autonomy are now beginning to embrace numerous agreements, such as the ATT and the EU Code of Conduct. Dangerous Trade explores the reasons top arms-exporting democracies have put aside past sovereignty, security, and economic worries in favor of humanitarian arms transfer controls and the early effects of this about-face on export practice. Pinpointing the normative shifts in the 1990s that put humanitarian arms control on the table, Erickson argues that major supporting exporters committed to these policies out of concern for their international reputations. She also highlights how arms trade scandals threaten domestic reputations and thus help improve compliance on the margins. Using statistical data and interviews conducted in France, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Erickson challenges existing IR theories of state behavior while providing insight into the role of reputation as a social mechanism and the importance of government transparency and accountability in generating compliance with new norms and rules.
Jennifer Erickson Bio: Her research interests include international security and arms control, conventional and nuclear weapons, and the laws and norms of war. Her book, Dangerous Trade: Conventional Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation (Columbia, 2015), explains states' commitment to and compliance with new humanitarian arms trade norms, articulated in the UN Arms Trade Treaty and related multilateral initiatives. It is the winner of the APSA Foreign Policy Section's 2017 Best Book Award (for books published in 2015 and 2016). Her articles have been published or are forthcoming in the European Journal of International Relations, Journal of Peace Research, Political Science Quarterly, and International Studies Perspectives.