ABSTRACT
From the outset, the goal of this project has been to help contribute to the growing nuclear proliferation literature focusing on the role of ideational factors to explain why states do or do not build nuclear weapons. “Although they admit that proliferation is impossible without sufficient technical capacity, idealists consider the key variable that determines the incidence of proliferation to be states perceptions of the bomb's utility and of its symbolism” (Hymans 2006b: 455). Inquiry as to the motivations of individual leaders is needed to break through the demand-side “bottle-neck” that continues standing in the way of advances in the proliferation scholarship (Hymans 2010). To solve this impasse, innovations in the area of Foreign Policy Analysis, and specifically operational code analysis, prove a powerful intellectual ally in sharing a common research puzzle: “whether and how do beliefs and interests of agents matter” (Walker and Schafer 2006: 238)? “Ultimately, it is leaders who make and implement decisions. Therefore, we cannot dispense with a systematic study of these agents of foreign policy change and the transformation of international relations” (Malici 2006: 147). The effort undertaken here to construct a systematic approach that accounts for how leaders’ perceptions shape their decisions proves useful in terms of both theory and policy development in the study of nuclear proliferation.
