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Epistemic Communities And Proliferation: The Implications Of Nuclear Knowledge, David Ayar Roze

Dissertations and Theses

How do epistemic communities facilitate nuclear proliferation? The nuclear nonproliferation regime contains numerous actors exerting varying levels of influence on policy outcomes and state behavior. Neoliberal institutional theory emphasizes the role of sub-national groups play in forming policy preferences; one under-researched group is epistemic communities. Existing literature tends to consider only the nonproliferation action of epistemic communities, however this study aims to examine how these communities can facilitate and lower the cost of undertaking nuclear weaponization, effectively encouraging proliferation. It is especially ironic that the literature has ignored the facilitation effect, given that America’s decision to investigate nuclear weapons began …