This paper identifies a current disharmony arising from increased expectations for the effectiveness and scope of the multilateral export control regime system, coupled with the reality of regime structures the inherent institutional limitations of which form significant barriers to meeting these expectations. The paper will propose that, through employing international legal and organizational theory this disharmony can be substantially mediated, and that the expectations of the multilateral nonproliferation community can be essentially met through efforts of reform and restructuring of the multilateral export control regimes. These efforts, while endowing the regimes with the increased formality necessary for increased levels of effectiveness at the same time do not present the serious challenges to notions of state sovereignty that have contributed to the current unwillingness to institute programs of reform within the regimes.