As states gather in Geneva this week for the Eighth Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), it is important to understand how the dynamics of countries led by right-wing populist leaders will inform the negotiations. A significant number of arms exporters are now led by populist regimes. Amongst these, several countries have fallen below the threshold of democratic rule, while others are likely to follow suit.
The erosion of democracy associated with rising populism is problematic for compliance with the ATT. Borderline authoritarian regimes are less transparent and do not value accountability. These are two tenets of multilateral disarmament embedded in the Arms Trade Treaty. Authoritarianism is also associated with a short time horizon, where political leaders discount the future in favour of more immediate benefits, for example, campaign contributions from interest groups, including weapons groups. As the late political scientist James Q. Wilson pointed out, this makes it hard to advance the agenda of public policies where benefits are perceived as diffuse while costs are perceived as concentrated. And finally, democracy is key to promoting ‘principled’ (as opposed to interest-based) enforcement of legal commitments by nations. Principled enforcement has special relevance in the context of the ATT, because regulation of the trade in conventional weapons is not prone to tit-for-tat actions: reciprocity won’t work to promote compliance.
For example, since June 2020, China has agreed to the provision of the ATT that prohibits the transfer of conventional weapons if these weapons are likely to be used for the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity or grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Enforcement based on the principle of reciprocity would ask of any country that wants to reprimand China for violating that provision, to incur the same treaty violation by endorsing illegal arms transfers. This is not only absurd, but it would amount to a dangerous race to the bottom. That’s why principled enforcement, the need to uphold the rule of law and countering the erosion of democracy, is important.
