We examine whether the conditions affecting initial expressions of hostility are similar to those affecting militarized disputes. Analyzing dyadic interactions during the years 1951-1992, we estimate a model to take into account selection effects and check it against another allowing conjunctive causation. Both provide close approximations to theoretical models of the conflict process and yield similar results. We confirm Kant's belief that all states are subject to the realist conditions of interstate competition that makes disputes likely, but that liberal influences, if present, can constrain the escalation of such disputes to war. Several influences on the conflict process have nonmonotonic effects over the range of state behavior. Geopolitical factors affect the opportunity for conflict more at lower levels of the conflict process, when less information is available regarding acceptable settlements and actors' resolve, than at higher levels. Factors affecting willingness gain importance as the conflict process unfolds because they facilitate the flow of information relevant to the ongoing dispute. The proposition that democracy and interdependence encourage diplomatic conflicts as signals of resolve is not supported.

There are both military and political dimensions to arms transfers, and their effects on state behavior may not be the same. In this article I examine the degree to which arms transfers and arms transfer dependence interact to affect foreign policy conflict. I hypothesize that, as a transfer of military capability, weapons shipments increase the tendency of the recipient to strike a conflictual posture in its foreign policy, while arms transfer dependence restrains that tendency. An arms recipient faces the possibility that weapons shipments will be curtailed during periods of regional crisis and hostility, and when a state is dependent on one or a few major suppliers for the bulk of its imported weaponry, the costs associated with supply restrictions increases. This should encourage restraint on the part of states otherwise emboldened by arms acquisitions. My analysis treats conflictual behavior as a multiplicative function of arms transfers and arms transfer dependence. Parameter estimates are derived from time series data for nine states engaged in enduring rivalries during the Cold War. For some of these states, there is evidence that arms shipments encouraged more conflictual foreign policies; but there is also evidence that this propensity was tempered by the degree of arms transfer dependence. The model is non-linear, so the precise effects of dependence vary depending on context - i.e. the state's current level of arms importation and dependence - but realistic predictions involve changes in foreign policy conflict equal to 5-25% of their mean levels during the period.

No abstract

No abstract

In recent years, researchers have increasingly turned their attention to the proliferation of small arms, a transnational trade amounting to over $7 billion in value during 2002. Small arms are difficult to track and are not the stuff of military parades, but they are immensely destructive. As much as $1 billion worth enters the black market annually. I argue that the illicit trade in small arms should be understood not as a market but as a network, one that shares some important properties with networked forms of organization studied by sociologists. I then employ quantitative methods developed for the study of social networks in an effort to show the basic structure of illegal small arms transfers to Africa. The analysis draws from my Illicit Arms Transfers (IAT) dataset still in its early stages of development, so the results are preliminary. They are suggestive, however, and the analytical approach promises to shed considerable light on a corner of the global arms trade that is of great interest to the research and activist communities, and of great consequence to those in war-torn regions of the world. * Not among the top ten coordinator locales.