This critical review of the new political science literature on the causes of nuclear weapons proliferation consists of seven parts. The first section briefly presents what we know about which states developed nuclear weapons and which states started but abandoned weapons development programs. I...

Studies of nuclear proliferation share five serious problems. First, nuclear programs' initiation and completion dates are ambiguous and difficult to code, but findings are rarely subjected to sufficient robustness tests using alternative codings. Second, independent variables overlook important...