Social Science Research Council

The GSC workshop on February 6th and 7th, 2002 provided new insights into how an agonizing problem of human security - the pervasive violence perpetrated by organized groups using small arms and light weapons - may or may not be amenable to legal remedies. Among the questions at the center of this project are how and why such violence occurs; the role of weapons and weapons availability in violence, instability, and human rights abuses; the capacity of states, multilateral organizations, civil society, and other institutions to cope with the cause and effect of this violence and instability; and larger scale phenomena, such as weak states, the globalized economy, interests and actions of major powers, and the construction and efficacy of international norms.The workshop's Agenda proceeded from the development of laws and the movement to regulate small arms to a specific re-examination of the scope of the problem, a look at future and existing possibilities for regulation, including comparative regime design, and finally to a discussion of the most salient questions raised by the workshop and the priorities for further research. Participants also identified opportunities where empirical social science research could make a substantive contribution to filling gaps in the existing knowledge about the issue.There are some assumptions that need to be explored and challenged if a serious and comprehensive approach to the small arms problematique is intended so as to move the debate forward in a constructive way. And it is precisely in this endeavor that social sciences scholarship can make an important contribution. Two fundamental assumptions underlie the work of the small arms activists, researchers, and sympathetic political leaders: (1) it is widely assumed, especially by practitioners, that there is a causal relation between small arms availability and the exacerbation of the level of violence in conflicts; and (2) that an international treaty would be the optimal remedy to this axis of availability and violence. The first assumption is beset by a lack both of empirical evidence and a framework for understanding the dynamics of the civil wars in which small-arms use and high lethality are most prominent. In what ways does availability contribute to conflict? Are there legitimate and defensive security needs served by importing small arms? Do particular causes of conflict shape the utility of small arms flows, or is sheer availability a cause? These kinds of questions, among others, have not benefited from field research or a systematic application of empirical theory. Likewise, global legal regimes for curtailing the proliferation of weapons have been proposed by NGOs and even some governments, but the suitability of such regimes to curtail the availability of small arms is essentially unknown. Designing legal mechanisms to constrain large-scale systems under the control of a few states, and constraining millions of small weapons in the hands of ordinary citizens, insurgents, private security firms, etc., as well as states, is such a wholly different task that global legal mechanisms may not be suitable at all. In other words, the laudable effort to curtail the arms trade is often detached from an understanding of the causes small arms use and the prospects for enforcement.The case of small arms highlights well the crucial interplay between law and politics. It also points to the need for solid empirical research in making sense of these developments to inform future efforts to enhance global security. Tracing transnational and interdisciplinary processes requires not only fieldwork, but a nuanced approach to the social and cultural particularities of the multi-layered and overlapping jurisdictions in the system of global governance. . In the wake of the July 2001 UN Conference on Small Arms and the acrimonious discussions surrounding it, the timing is propitious for a rigorous re-examination of the scope of the problem and the political, legal, and social mechanisms for dealing with it. Targeted empirical research could make a useful contribution to the debate by examining in more detail the nature of the problems caused by small arms proliferation. This is why the GSC Program seeks to join social science methodologies with legal approaches to enhance our understanding of processes of transnational governance. The case of small arms proliferation has been chosen because it is a problem that has theoretical complexity, it represents important new challenges to global stability, and studying it may provide new insights into regime formation, from which to draw wider lessons.