Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A national data base covering all homicides since 1980 and a sample of 10 percent of suicides is currently being built up in Switzerland, combining medical, police and court data. Based on yet partial findings, the paper will look at the correlation between type of homicide constellation (instrumental, family, multiple vs. single killings, acts followed by suicide of the offender or not etc.) and type of weapon involved. It seems that overall assessments of homicide and weapon use may be misleading as long as particular constellations are ignored, homicide being a particularly heterogeneous category including many different types of acts that each are motivated and conditioned by other variables.

Martin Killias, University of Lausanne, Ecole des sciences criminelles, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Thanks the interaction of persistent conflicts in much of the world with the legacies of Cold War policies and global trends in defense economics, vast quantities of military equipment have spread across the globe. The hardware ranges from sophisticated high-performance weapons such destroyers and fighter planes to small, rugged light weapons. In parallel with the weapons has come the steady spread of technology and technical capabilities that enable an increasing number of countries to build their own weapons or to improve the quality of weapons they or others already have. And with the exception of ballistic missiles and antipersonnel landmines, throughout the 1990s most governments either ignored or actively encouraged various forms of this proliferation in the name of supporting allies and friends, promoting security in an insecure world, or maintaining their domestic military industries via exports. This paper will examine the prospects for engendering international support for efforts to address the continuing proliferation of major conventional weapons and technologies and review the arms control tools available to support any such efforts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The development, production and use of biological weapons (BW) is prohibited by international treaties. Details of this prohibition have been codified in the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, which forms the core of the BW control regime and contains the core norms of the regime. This paper follows a reflexive approach to international norms, in which norms are not immutable, but subject to change over time and in which certain social practices can lead to norm contestation and change. Clearly such a norm contestation is more likely to have an impact on regime evolution if the norms are contested by a great power like the United States of America, rather than a norm contestation by, say Belgium.
Applying such a reflexive approach to the norms of the biological weapons (BW) prohibtion regime, the paper will proceed in four steps. It will first provide a brief outline of the conceptual underpinnings of the approach to norms of international regimes and their contestation. Second, it will describe the normative structure of the BW prohibition regime as it presented itself during the 1990s. This will be followed by an analysis of social practices within the USA, as they manifested themselves in discursive interventions by actors in the political system . The fourth step will trace the impact of this norm contestation on the international level, where the social practices to be analysed will focus on the negotiations for a Compliance Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), their collapse and the setting-up of the so-called “New Process” to strengthen the effectiveness of the BW regime. The paper will conclude with a (preliminary) assessment of the implications of the norm contestation through the US on the international level for the future of the BW prohibition regime and its normative structure.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: As technologies age, they can become problematic, as their functionality degrades or the surrounding sociotechnical context changes. People often respond to problematic technology by engaging in sociotechnical “repair” activities, such as maintenance, troubleshooting, or redesign. Since the end of the Cold War, these activities have taken a central role in the U.S. nuclear weapons program, as stockpiled weapons are no longer continually replaced with new designs. We take “repair” to be a fundamental category of sociotechnical activity that modifies technological artifacts, practices, and social settings to maintain order in sociotechnical systems. This usage of the term draws on its common technological meaning as well as its usage in ethnomethodology to describe methods for maintaining order in social interactions. The Stockpile Stewardship program, initiated as the Cold War ended, sought to repair weapons through an engineering strategy of continually replacing parts, leaving weapons designers to maintain and exercise their tacit knowledge with sophisticated computer simulations. In contrast, the new Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program proposes that designers take the lead in repair of the stockpile by redesigning weapon components to optimize them for long-term stability in storage, reducing the need for engineering expertise by designing stability into the weapons themselves. Each strategy rests on contested assumptions about the nature and quality of the tacit knowledge of engineers and designers. These alternate visions for the stockpile have significant political implications as decisions are made about the future direction and size of the nuclear weapons complex.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper focuses on the argumentative processes through which new international norms prohibiting the use of weapons causing severe civilian harm emerge. It examines the communicative exchange between the military and non-governmental organizations regar