Arming for conflict, arming for peace? How small arms imports affect intrastate conflict risk

Mehltretter, Andreas

doi:10.1177/07388942211045940

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 89 publications

(204 reference statements)

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“…The NISAT data thus provide for SALW what the SIPRI data do for MCW, albeit for a shorter time period and with transfer volumes being expressed in terms of financial instead of military value. That being said, the NISAT data have been used somewhat less commonly to systematically investigate and test the drivers and consequences of the small arms trade, with the only published work we are aware of being Baronchelli et al (2022), Baronchelli and Caruso (2023), Lebacher et al (2021), Mehltretter (2022), and Mehrl and Thurner (2020).…”

Section: Existing Arms Trade Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Interwar Period International Trade in Arms (IPITA): A New Dataset

Mehrl,

Thurner

2023

Preprint

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International weapons transfers send military capabilities, make arms production economically feasible, and construct security relations. They influence buyers’ and sellers’ foreign policies, domestic politics, and military spending behavior. However, data availability has limited their study to the bipolar Cold War and unipolar post-Cold War periods. We thus introduce the Interwar Period International Trade in Arms (IPITA) data, covering dyadic transfers of small arms, light weapons, ammunition, explosives, and major conventional weapons in the years 1920-1939. The IPITA data will offer new avenues to study the drivers, dynamics, and consequences of arms transfers, both in past and future multipolar systems.

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Section: Existing Arms Trade Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Interwar Period International Trade in Arms (IPITA): A New Dataset

Mehrl,

Thurner

2023

Preprint

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“…Separation commonly occurs in political science, usually when a binary explanatory variable perfectly predicts a binary outcome (e.g., Gustafson 2020;Mehltretter 2022;Owsiak and Vasquez 2021). 1 For example, Barrilleaux and Rainey (2014) find that being a Democrat perfectly predicts a governor supporting Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hypothesis Tests under Separation

Rainey

2023

Polit. Anal.

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Separation commonly occurs in political science, usually when a binary explanatory variable perfectly predicts a binary outcome. In these situations, methodologists often recommend penalized maximum likelihood or Bayesian estimation. But researchers might struggle to identify an appropriate penalty or prior distribution. Fortunately, I show that researchers can easily test hypotheses about the model coefficients with standard frequentist tools. While the popular Wald test produces misleading (even nonsensical) p-values under separation, I show that likelihood ratio tests and score tests behave in the usual manner. Therefore, researchers can produce meaningful p-values with standard frequentist tools under separation without the use of penalties or prior information.

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Money first? Strategic and economic interests in the international arms trade network, 1920–1936

Mehrl,

Seussler,

Thurner

2024

Global Networks

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Arms transfers result from economic and political motives, with the latter often dominating the former. While this is accepted knowledge for the post‐World War II period, it seems not to apply earlier. Much existing research argues that in the interwar years, weapons were traded as purely commercial goods because governments had neither the ability nor willingness to control and direct arms transfers. We reassess this idea and argue that, while formal control was largely absent, governments could steer weapons shipments nonetheless because arms producers depended on them as main customers, sales agents, and financiers of their export business. Anecdotal evidence suggests that governments actively used this influence. To test whether interwar arms transfers were the result of political or commercial interests, we use newly collected, historical data on the small arms trade and inferential network analysis methods. Our results suggest that although economic drivers existed throughout the interwar period, political considerations were especially influential when international relations were hostile at the start and end of the period. This research contributes to our understanding of international economic relations between the world wars and of the drivers of arms transfers across time.

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Arming for conflict, arming for peace? How small arms imports affect intrastate conflict risk

Cited by 5 publications

References 89 publications

The Interwar Period International Trade in Arms (IPITA): A New Dataset

The Interwar Period International Trade in Arms (IPITA): A New Dataset

Hypothesis Tests under Separation

Money first? Strategic and economic interests in the international arms trade network, 1920–1936

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