In Dangerous Trade, Jennifer L. Erickson addresses two empirical puzzles: (1) absent the receipt of material gains from doing so, why have states committed to international treaties designed to limit their exports of small and major conventional arms to countries in conflict zones or that violate human rights (i.e., to engage in “responsible” arms control practice), and (2) given that they have committed to these treaties, why do states’ record of actual arms exports not reflect compliance with them? She motivates these puzzles in Chapter 3 by providing statistical evidence that these two contradictory patterns exist in the arms trade. Since the late 1990s, states have increasingly worked to commit to policies designed to limit the export of small and major conventional arms to states that violate human rights—a trend that culminated in the creation of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which entered into force at the end of 2014. At the same time, however, data on the trade of small and major conventional arms do not reflect these commitments. As Erickson shows, even after the negotiation of the ATT, arms exporters are at best indifferent towards states' human rights practices, and in some cases, states with more egregious human rights violations are actually more likely to receive arms than states that better protect human rights.

These contradictory patterns between commitment to and compliance with international arms control agreements, according to Erickson, have come about because state behavior in this issue area is being driven by reputational concerns, as opposed to the material or normative concerns most international relations scholarship argues drive state behavior. As Erickson argues, commitment is driven by governments’ concerns with their state’s international reputation, and compliance, when it does rarely exist, is driven by governments’ concerns with their domestic reputation.

States have committed themselves to international policies that codify norms bringing human rights into ideas about arms control in order to “maintain (or better) their reputation as a ‘good international citizen’” (p. 83). Because they are driven by reputational, rather than normative concerns, states often make these commitments even if they have not internalized these new norms. Their actual behavior will therefore not necessarily follow their stated commitment to these norms. Moreover, compliance imposes costs on states’ defense industry and foreign policy autonomy. States thus even have a material incentive not to comply with these norms. Commitment will not necessarily go hand-in-hand with compliance.

Compliance comes not from the existence of a commitment, but from governments’ concerns about their domestic reputation. In particular, the (minor) changes in compliance that do result in greater consistency with international arms control policies are largely adopted in response to arms trade scandals or the threat of scandals, and the costs to a government’s domestic reputation that come with them. When there is both transparency regarding the arms control policies a state adopts and the existence of pro-arms control nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that might highlight “irresponsible” arms export policies in the media, thus inflicting reputational costs, “relatively ‘better’ (though so far not ‘good’) arms transfer practices” can result (p. 108).

Erickson’s theoretical argument is clear and carefully thought out. While she simplifies considerably the vast and diverse bodies of literature captured by the “potential alternative explanations” she forwards (realism, neoliberalism, domestic liberalism, and constructivism), she does well in illustrating the difficultly that arguments based on material and normative concerns are likely to have in explaining the empirical commitment and compliance patterns she identifies in relation to arms control. This clearly does not rule out all possible alternative explanations captured by these significant bodies of literature. It does, however, help to demonstrate the importance of the reputational concerns she argues are driving state behavior in this issue area. Moreover, her argument about the role reputation plays in international relations is unique, and provides a novel way to think about the issue.

The empirical section of the book presents an in-depth analysis well-rooted in strong background research. However, Erickson’s case selection raises some questions about the generalizability of her argument. The cases she uses to demonstrate her argument are limited to Western democracies. Erickson admits that her argument is designed to speak to democracies, in particular: “I … hold regime type constant under the assumption that democracies are the most susceptible to pressures to support and implement new policies” (p. 13). While she does capture variation in commitment and compliance within the set of democracies she chooses (some voted for commitment while some voted against, and some comply better than others), the focus on Western democracies alone raises the question about whether the argument extends to non-democracies as well. This is particularly relevant for the “commitment” part of her argument, which does not rely on domestic factors; it is solely based on concerns about states’ international reputation. This commitment argument should thus hold regardless of a state’s domestic characteristics. Given the abstention by some non-democratic major exporters of small and conventional arms in the votes on major international arms control agreements—“Russia and later China” (p. 13)—it would be interesting to know how these types of states are reacting to their own international reputational concerns when they choose to abstain rather than to support or vote against the creation of the arms control treaties she examines.

Perhaps more importantly, the only cases in which Erickson shows that domestic politics actually has been able to bring about a degree of compliance with arms control agreements are states that are members of the European Union (EU)—states that have gone farther than any others in committing to international arms control (with the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports and EU Joint Action on Strategic Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) standing out from her list of agreements in Appendix A). It is therefore less clear that commitment or norm internalization is not driving these states toward compliance. How do we know that EU states have not begun to internalize these norms and are therefore not being driven in their compliance by normative (rather than reputational) concerns?

Erickson does try to address the case selection issue in the concluding chapter by examining the (non-Western) cases of Israel, South Africa, and Brazil. While she shows that these other democracies do seem to consider reputational concerns in their commitment to international arms control agreements, none of these cases show a non-democracy with these concerns. Moreover, none of these states show actual compliance with those agreements, as she argues some EU states do. The question thus remains how non-democracies react to concerns about international reputation, and whether compliance is an artefact of specific EU state characteristics.

Despite these issues, Erickson’s argument has potentially important implications for the study of commitment to and compliance with international agreements. She shows that commitment and compliance do not necessarily go hand-in-hand as much current scholarship might suggest. Moreover, she offers an interesting and plausible alternative explanation for the disparity between commitment and compliance with international arms trade agreements—concerns about reputation at the international and domestic level. Dangerous Trade thus suggests that there is significantly more work to be done in the study of commitment to and compliance with international agreements.