The Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) had many opponents when, in 1995, it came up for extension. The majority of parties opposed extension, and experts expected a limited extension as countries sought alternative means to manage nuclear weapons. But against all predictions, the treaty was extended indefinitely, and without a vote. Networked Nonproliferation offers a social network theory explanation of how the NPT was extended, giving new insight into why international treaties succeed or fail. The United States was the NPT's main proponent, but even a global superpower cannot get its way through coercion or persuasion alone. Michal Onderco draws on unique in-depth interviews and newly declassified documents to analyze the networked power at play. Onderco not only gives the richest account yet of the conference, looking at key actors like South Africa, Egypt, and the EU, but also challenges us to reconsider how we think about American power in international relations. With Networked Nonproliferation, Onderco provides new insight into multilateral diplomacy in general and nuclear nonproliferation in particular, with consequences for understanding a changing global system as the US, the chief advocate of nonproliferation and a central node in the diplomatic networks around it, declines in material power.

The Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) had many opponents when, in 1995, it came up for extension. The majority of parties opposed extension, and experts expected a limited extension as countries sought alternative means to manage nuclear weapons. But against all predictions, the treaty was extended indefinitely, and without a vote. Networked Nonproliferation offers a social network theory explanation of how the NPT was extended, giving new insight into why international treaties succeed or fail. The United States was the NPT's main proponent, but even a global superpower cannot get its way through coercion or persuasion alone. Michal Onderco draws on unique in-depth interviews and newly declassified documents to analyze the networked power at play. Onderco not only gives the richest account yet of the conference, looking at key actors like South Africa, Egypt, and the EU, but also challenges us to reconsider how we think about American power in international relations. With Networked Nonproliferation, Onderco provides new insight into multilateral diplomacy in general and nuclear nonproliferation in particular, with consequences for understanding a changing global system as the US, the chief advocate of nonproliferation and a central node in the diplomatic networks around it, declines in material power.

South Africa remains the only state that developed a nuclear weapons capability, but ultimately decided to dismantle existing weapons and abandon the programme. Disarming Apartheid reconstructs the South African decision-making and diplomatic negotiations over the country's nuclear weapons programme and its international status, drawing on new and extensive archival material and interviews. This deeply researched study brings to light a unique disarmament experience. It traces the country's previously neglected path towards accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Rather than relying primarily on US government archives, the book joins the burgeoning field of national nuclear histories based on unprecedented access to policymakers and documents in the country studied. Robin E. Möser, in addition to providing access to important new documents, offers original interpretations that enrich the study of nuclear politics for historians and political scientists.

At a moment when the nuclear nonproliferation regime is under duress, Rebecca Davis Gibbons provides a trenchant analysis of the international system that has, for more than fifty years, controlled the spread of these catastrophic weapons. The Hegemon's Tool Kit details how that regime works and how, disastrously, it might falter. In the early nuclear age, experts anticipated that all technologically-capable states would build these powerful devices. That did not happen. Widespread development of nuclear arms did not occur, in large part, because a global nuclear nonproliferation regime was created. By the late-1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had drafted the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and across decades the regime has expanded, with more agreements and more nations participating. As a result, in 2022, only nine states possess nuclear weapons. Why do most states in the international system adhere to the nuclear nonproliferation regime? The answer lies, Gibbons asserts, in decades of painstaking efforts undertaken by the US government. As the most powerful state during the nuclear age, the United States had many tools with which to persuade other states to join or otherwise support nonproliferation agreements. The waning of US global influence, Gibbons shows in The Hegemon's Tool Kit, is a key threat to the nonproliferation regime. So, too, is the deepening global divide over progress on nuclear disarmament. To date, the Chinese government is not taking significant steps to support the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and as a result, the regime may face a harmful leadership gap.

Networks are omnipresent in our natural and social world, and they are at the heart of politics. Relationships of many types drive political institutions, processes, and decision-making. Therefore, it is imperative for the study of politics to include network approaches. Already, these approaches have advanced our understanding of critical questions, such as: Why do people vote? How can people build problem-solving coalitions? How can governments and organizations foster innovations? How can countries build ties that promote peace? What are the most fruitful strategies for disrupting arms or terrorist networks? This volume is designed as a foundational statement and resource. The contributions offer instruction on network theory and methods at both beginner and advanced levels, as well as an assessment of the state-of-the-discipline on a variety of applied network topics in politics. Through this dynamic collection of essays, The Oxford Handbook of Political Networks elucidates how the field is transforming and what that means for the future of political science.

The collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed the specter of the largest wave of nuclear proliferation in history. Why did Ukraine ultimately choose the path of nuclear disarmament? The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left its nearly 30,000 nuclear weapons spread over the territories of four newly sovereign states: Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. This collapse cast a shadow of profound ambiguity over the fate of the world's largest arsenal of the deadliest weapons ever created. In Inheriting the Bomb, Mariana Budjeryn reexamines the history of nuclear predicament caused by the Soviet collapse and the subsequent nuclear disarmament of the non-Russian Soviet successor states. Although Belarus and Kazakhstan renounced their claim to Soviet nuclear weapons, Ukraine proved to be a difficult case: with its demand for recognition as a lawful successor state of the USSR, a nuclear superpower, the country became a major proliferation concern. And yet by 1994, Ukraine had acceded to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapon state and proceeded to transfer its nuclear warheads to Russia, which emerged as the sole nuclear successor of the USSR. How was this international proliferation crisis averted? Drawing on extensive archival research in the former Soviet Union and the United States, Budjeryn uncovers a fuller and more nuanced narrative of post-Soviet denuclearization. She reconstructs Ukraine's path to nuclear disarmament to understand how its leaders made sense of the nuclear armaments their country inherited. Among the various factors that contributed to Ukraine's nuclear renunciation, including diplomatic pressure from the United States and Russia and domestic economic woes, the NPT stands out as a salient force that provided an international framework for managing the Soviet nuclear collapse.

This handbook offers a unique approach to the question: How do scholars write the future of global politics? Written in futur antérieur style, around the 200-year anniversary of the birth of International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline, the contributions engage in world-building and imagine different futures of IR. Set in a multiverse, 23 chapters draw on a range of possible themes and imaginaries, for instance post-pandemic conditions, the Anthropocene, and not least academic practices and the role of researchers. A concluding chapter anchors these explorations in contemporary discussions. The book mirrors the format and style of existing handbooks, combining outlines and discussions of theories, structures, processes, and core issues in IR with an academic science fiction account of how these might play out over the course of the next century. In doing so, the book challenges IR and provides alternative imaginaries, rather than predicting future conditions for all humanity. The book invites readers to reflect on how thinking about the future has become an increasingly radical, but more than ever necessary act.