Norms and Institutional Persistence: Legitimacy and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

What makes international institutions endure when they are challenged by noncompliance--especially in the field of arms control where the stakes and risks are so high? When noncompliance threatens an institution, actors can choose to abandon it, replace it, or rally in its defense. Realists and rationalists would expect an examination of materially defined interests to explain this variation. However, these approaches are not alone capable of describing how and why the strategic interests of states change in a way that accounts for the variance in outcomes. Consideration of the concept of legitimacy is necessary to complete the circle. Specifically, this paper disaggregates the concept of legitimacy in order to isolate its different operational dimensions. It then examines them in the case of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which is widely considered to be experiencing a "crisis of compliance," and seeks to identify the conditions in which the NPT would, in fact, unravel. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]