Call for Papers and Applications: Regional Perspectives on a Nuclear Weapons Ban

The journal welcomes submissions for a special issue that explores how regional politics shape global nonproliferation and disarmament politics. Banning nuclear weapons is an international ambition at the core of most disarmament and nonproliferation initiatives. This ambition gained new momentum with the Treaty on the Prohibition of nuclear weapons (TPNW) in 2017. With the 50th anniversary of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT), in 2022. Supporters of the TPNW argue that it fills a normative gap that has allowed the continued existence of nuclear arms. Its critics find that it does not create the conditions for a global zero, and they call instead for a commitment to a phased approach to nuclear disarmament. Likewise, the NPT has been under pressure over the last decades, illustrated by the impasses during the 2005 and 2015 review conferences. Divergent positions towards the TPNW and the NPT bring to light different approaches to nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, the growing gaps between regional security structures, and the shifting role of other actors – from governments to civil society in defining those structures. Policymakers, negotiators, activists, and scholars continue to diverge on the appropriate means to achieve a global ban on nuclear weapons, and those divergences vary significantly across different regions.

General themes that contributors can address in their essays include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The intersections between Area Studies, Comparative Research, and Global Studies in Nonproliferation and Disarmament studies;

• Regional Perspectives towards the TPNW and the NPT (e.g., from Africa, Asia-Pacific, East Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, South Asia, the Middle East);

• The impact of different regional security environments in the establishment of a global norm banning nuclear weapons;

• Regional-based solutions and approaches to a nuclear weapons ban;

• The impacts and consequences of a nuclear weapons ban to regional security structures;

• Transnational and regional-based activism on nuclear nonproliferation and Disarmament;

• Regional powers and global international power competition in nuclear politics;

• Regional tendencies that facilitate or block the assimilation of global norms associated to nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

Please visit the journal’s website for submission instructions.

In preparation for that special issue and with the aim of fostering discussions and new scholarship on how regional politics share global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament politics, the guest editors invite applications for a virtual authors’ workshop on 22 May 2023.

Applicants for the authors’ workshop will be accepted until 2 April 2023. To apply, please send a one-page abstract together with a bio note to leonardo.bandarra@uni-due.de and miriam.prys@giga-hamburg.de. We also welcome proposals for Interviews, Collections, or Orations. Please note in your email message which type of publishing format you intend to submit.

Please note that participation in this workshop does not entail an automatic acceptance of a contribution to the special issue and authors can propose manuscripts without having participated in the workshop. All articles for the special issue will have to be submitted online through the journal’s website and will be subjected to peer-review process.