Description: States often encounter domestic and international arguments about the best way to evaluate treaty compliance. Agreement on verification principles and procedures poses special challenges for security issues, such as strategic arms reduction, nuclear testing, and chemical weapons. It can also present problems for accords about the environment, human rights, and other cooperative issues.

In The Politics of Verification, Gallagher explores the causes of verification controversies and the processes through which they are perpetuated or provisionally resolved. By examining nuclear test ban negotiations from the Eisenhower through the Clinton administrations, Gallagher finds that the assumptions about verification that have dominated U.S. policy shape domestic debates in ways that hinder stable agreement on significant test restrictions. She focuses on the dynamic interconnections between domestic and international politics, and analyzes the slow process of coalition building when conflicting interests and ideas create divisions both among and inside states.

Gallagher concludes that the end of the Cold War has altered the arms control context without resolving basic questions about the appropriate amount and type of verification. Thus, the negotiation and ratification of major cooperative accords k will continue to be shaped by verification compromises and coalitions.

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