Nuclear Proliferation

Abstract

This bibliography reviews the scholarly literature on the meaning, causes, and consequences of nuclear proliferation. Specifically, the bibliography focuses on “horizontal” nuclear weapons proliferation, which can be defined as the acquisition of nuclear weapons by states and other political entities that did not previously have them. Overshadowed by the superpower nuclear arms race during the Cold War, nuclear proliferation has become a major field of interdisciplinary international relations (IR) research since the 1990s. Much nuclear proliferation research has revolved around the empirical puzzle of why so many states that could build nuclear weapons have refrained from doing so. Despite proliferation’s surprisingly slow pace, however, the number of de facto nuclear-weapon states has gradually grown larger over time, and a slow pace in the past does not guarantee a slow pace in the future. On the other side of the coin, proliferation reversal, also known as nuclear renunciation, is also possible. In addition to studying the causes of nuclear proliferation, scholars have also investigated the effects of nuclear proliferation on numerous dimensions of policy and politics. But the literature on the consequences of proliferation remains much thinner than the literature on its causes.