Updating the Determinants of Nuclear Proliferation Dataset: 1939-2012 - PDF document

Transactions of the Korean Nuclear Society Virtual Spring Meeting July 9-10, 2020 Updating the Determinants of Nuclear Proliferation Dataset: 1939-2012 Chul Min Kim a , Hyeon Seok Park b , Man-Sung Yim a, * a Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology b School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology * Corresponding author: msyim@kaist.ac.kr 1. Introduction international threats. However, Sagan (1996) summarized that three factors, including domestic security and international politics, as well as Nuclear proliferation history implies that the nuclear international security, have been considered in the proliferation risk of a country should be based on both country's decision to develop nuclear weapons. current capability and motivational factors. Previous Based on this, Singh and Way (2004) constructed a studies have attempted to analyze the relative dataset on nuclear proliferation with three phases of importance of the determinants of nuclear proliferation nuclear weapons development (exploration, pursuit, and using the historical information of the countries under acquisition) and three categories of determinants consideration, or with developed nuclear weapons (Jo (technological, external, and internal). Table I and Gartzke, 2007; Li et al., 2010; Meyer, 1984; Singh summarizes the definitions of their proliferation history, and Way, 2004). However, the dynamics of nuclear and Table II summarizes the categories of proliferation weapons decision-making process is still not well determinants and variables from previous quantitative understood. Montgomery and Sagan (2009); Sagan nuclear proliferation studies. They used multinomial (2011); and Bell (2016) analyzed and summarized the logistic regression analysis and survival (event history) major challenges of quantitative proliferation studies. analysis to calculate the importance of each determinant This has led to the almost disappearance of literature and predict the proliferation risk of the country. using quantitative approaches. As in any scientific enterprise, improving measurement must be a central TABLE I: Four Levels of Nuclear Proliferation goal of the proliferation literature (Sechser, 2016). Since 2000, new proliferators such as North Korea, Level Name Description Syria and Iran have appeared. The importance of non- 0 No interest No proliferation attempts state actors emerged after the September 11, 2001 Country considered nuclear attack. The environment surrounding nuclear security 1 Exploration weapons and conducted some and proliferation has been changed. Nevertheless, exploratory work quantitative nuclear proliferation studies still cover from Country started a nuclear 2 Pursuit 1950 to 2000 as the research scope. weapons development program In this study, we re-built the dataset to help enhance First explosion/assembly of the reliability of quantitative nuclear proliferation 3 Acquisition nuclear weapon studies. The coverage of the nuclear proliferation dataset was updated from 1950-2000 to 1939-2012. TABLE II. Categories of Proliferation Determinants and Thanks to the studies updated and improved the Variables from Previous Studies credibility of nuclear proliferation history (Bleek, 2017) Category Subcategory Variable and sources used to build the independent datasets of GDP, GDP per capita, previous studies have been updated over the years, we Economic GDP^2, log(GDP), extended the coverage of proliferation determinants capacity population used in previous quantitative nuclear proliferation Industry indicators, studies. Industrial electricity, Iron and steel capacity production 2. Previous Studies Existence of nuclear fuel Capability Nuclear cycle capacity and Why do countries develop nuclear weapons even capability sensitive material though there are technological, normative barriers and Sensitive nuclear taboos? When does the state decide to initiate nuclear assistance, civilian weapons program? Researchers tried to find the Nuclear nuclear assistance, IAEA evidence of these questions countries that have assistance technological considered nuclear weapons. cooperation In the early literatures on the causes and Political consequences of nuclear proliferation, the focus was Domestic Democracy score System mainly on the motive for countries to secure national Politics Domestic 5-year change of sovereignty and security against several types of

Transactions of the Korean Nuclear Society Virtual Spring Meeting July 9-10, 2020 capacity and energy consumption. COW National Unrest democracy score Leader’s Coup d ’ etat experience, Material Capabilities v5.0 (Dutka et al., 2017), which covers from 1816-2012, provided steel production and Characteri- regime length, leader primary energy consumption data. stics type International relations and domestic politics variables Frequency of disputes, were calculated using updated version of datasets used Rivalry conventional threat, in previous studies. The Militarized Interstate Disputes nuclear threat (MID) dataset, which was used to calculate dispute Security guarantee involvement of a country, were also updated to 2010 (defense pact), nuclear Alliance International (Palmer et al., 2019). COW Formal Alliances (v4.1) deployment, troop Security dataset, which was used to indicate the security deployment guarantee from the superpower countries, covers from Domestic Economic openness 1816-2012 (Gibler, 2009). The famous rivalry dataset Isolation (Klein et al., 2006) describes the rival states were also Power of Major power country, updated to Peace scale data, which covers from 1900- Nation regional power country 2015. It is an extensive revision, updating, and IAEA (membership, extension of our original rivalry dataset to include safeguards agreement, peaceful relationships (Diehl et al., 2019). The coverage additional protocol), International Norm of Polity IV annual time-series dataset for democracy- NPT (signed / ratified), related variables, were also expanded to 1800-2018 other nuclear-related (Marshall et al., 2019). multilateral agreements Finally, international norms variables were updated. NPT signatory and ratification dates were assessed from 3. Updating the Dataset the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) repository (United Nations Office for Thanks to the sources used to build the independent Disarmament Affairs, n.d.), and ratification dates of datasets of previous studies have been updated over the comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA) and years, we were able to extend the coverage of additional protocol (AP) with International Atomic proliferation determinants used in Singh and Way Energy Agency (IAEA) were assessed from the IAEA (2004) (SW hereafter), originally from 1950-2000, to repository (IAEA, 2019). 1939-2012. First, various researchers have been developed 4. Results datasets to describe the country's economic and industrial capacity. In the SW dataset, Penn World New nuclear proliferation dataset had lesser missing Tables (PWT) (Feenstra et al., 2015), the Maddison data, compared with SW. Table III shows the status of Project (Bolt et al., 2018), and Gleditsch (2002) ’s missing data of SW and newly constructed dataset. dataset were used to obtain Gross Domestic Product (GDP), trade and population. Similarly, we imported the Table III. Missing Data Status of Datasets GDP dataset from the R package Variables SW SW New New AuthoritarianismBook::economic_data (Marquez, (all) (selecte (all) (selecte 2016), which combined historical estimates of GDP d) d) from the Maddison, PWT, the World Bank (The World GDP per capita 819 269 300 123 Bank, 2020), and Gleditsch (2002). The population dataset was also imported from GDP squared 819 269 300 123 AuthoritarianismBook::population_data , a dataset extending Gleditsch's population of independent states Industrial 17 0 0 0 list (Gleditsch, 2002) with the World Development capacity Indicators "SP.POP.TOTL" variable (The World Bank, Rival states 0 0 0 0 2020) and the World Population data assembled by Max Disputes (5-year 525 192 539 0 Roser (Max Roser and Ortiz-Ospina, 2020). average) Instead of using trade data of PWT and Gleditsch Ally with 67 15 0 0 following SW, we used Correlates of War (COW) Nuclear International Trade dataset (Barbieri et al., 2009) to Weapon States calculate economic openness, considering its wider Democracy 676 50 1019 35 coverage. Industrial capacity variables were calculated Index (Polity from updated IV) Industrial capacity index included the data of Economic 845 255 1120 262 domestic steel production, electricity-generation