Marius Mehrl
Biographic Data
| ID | 388934 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marius Mehrl |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marius |
| FAMILY NAME | Mehrl |
| SIGNATURE | MEHRL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5825-9256 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 81 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Transnational Voters: Citizenship regimes, Political mobilisation, and the Emigrant Vote in Turkish Elections, 2014-2023
Many countries allow external citizens to vote from abroad. But while research has explored when external citizens can, and actually choose to, take up this transnational practice, little research investigates who external citizens vote for , centring almost exclusively how they differ from voters in the country of origin. We highlight two transnational drivers of external citizens’ vote choices. First, exclusion abroad should push them to engage…
The Gender Gap in Peace and Conflict Journals, 2000–2024
While the issue of gender representation has gained increasing recognition across various academic disciplines, existing knowledge about the current state of gender representation in peace and conflict studies remains limited. This study aims to investigate gender representation in peace and conflict studies by examining a newly collected dataset of articles published in five academic journals representative of the field between 2000 and 2024. We…
Arming the new Sheriff in Town: Arms Transfers in the Wake of Leadership Turnover
While a large existing body of work considers the international determinants and consequences of arms transfers, research on their domestic sources is rare. However, anecdotal evidence highlights their importance. This paper addresses this gap by linking arms transfers to research on the consequences of leadership turnover for interstate relations. It develops the expectation that leadership turnover in a recipient country should result in reduce…
Exponential Random Graph Models for Dynamic Signed Networks: An Application to International Relations
Substantive research in the Social Sciences regularly investigates signed networks, where edges between actors are positive or negative. One often-studied example within International Relations for this type of network consists of countries that can cooperate with or fight against each other. These analyses often build on structural balance theory, one of the earliest and most prominent network theories. While the theorization and description of …
The Interwar Period International Trade in Arms: A New Dataset
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 …
The 2023/24 Views Prediction challenge: Predicting the number of fatalities in armed conflict, with uncertainty
Governmental and nongovernmental organizations have increasingly relied on early-warning systems of conflict to support their decisionmaking. Predictions of war intensity as probability distributions prove closer to what policymakers need than point estimates, as they encompass useful representations of both the most likely outcome and the lower-probability risk that conflicts escalate catastrophically. Point-estimate predictions, by contrast, fa…
Foreign Legionnaires and Military Mutinies
The composition of the armed forces is, by now, well established as a major factor determining the risk of coups d’état. However, military discontent not only manifests in the form of coups but also as mutinies. This latter form of troop rebellion has received little empirical attention. We examine how the practice of recruiting foreigners into the armed forces affects the likelihood of such events and develop two arguments regarding a direct and…
Looking for the International in international relations and political science: Evidence from author locations in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations , 1999-2023
Political science and international relations have undergone substantive internationalisation over the last 25 years. This short article uses a dataset covering all papers published in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations to investigate how authorship in the journal has changed over time in light of this. It finds that while, overall, BJPIR has been dominated by authors based at institutions in the United Kingdom, the journ…
Preventing Dissent: Secret Police and Protests in Dictatorships
This article examines the impact of secret police organizations on the occurrence of antiregime protests in authoritarian regimes. We argue that such organizations are related to lower levels of protests via two related mechanisms: intelligence gathering and an increased perception of risk among citizens, which reduce citizens' ability and willingness to mobilize, respectively. Using new data on secret police organizations in dictatorships coveri…
Secret Police Organizations and State Repression
Secret police are generally viewed as key institutions in autocrats’ repression apparatus. However, we lack clear empirical evidence on the link between secret police and repression. Instead, recent studies indicate that the surveillance provided by secret police reduces physical human rights abuses. This paper re-examines the relationship between secret police and physical state repression. We identify four mechanisms linking these variables, de…
The dictator’s legionnaires: Foreign Recruitment, Coups, and Uprisings
Several countries recruit foreign nationals into their armed forces. This is despite the norm of citizen armies and the strong idea that individuals join the military to defend their home country while military service socializes them into good citizens. We argue that foreign recruits can have very specific benefits for some authoritarian governments. Because they lack strong links to society, their loyalties lie with whoever recruited and pays t…
Money first? Strategic and economic interests in the international arms trade network, 1920-1936
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 f…
How Mechanization Shapes Coups
Civil-military relations are characterized by a fundamental dilemma. To lower coup risk, leaders frequently empower the military, which satisfies the armed forces with the status quo and enables them to fight against threats challenging the civilian leadership. Simultaneously, a too powerful military itself constitutes a potential threat that is capable of overthrowing the government. Our research adds to this debate by examining the impact of me…
Rage and the Machines? Force Mechanization and Violence against Civilians
There is an ongoing discussion regarding the role of mechanized forces in counterinsurgency warfare. Proponents note that they boost counterinsurgents’ ability to fight while critics point out that they diminish their ability to gather information. This note adds to this discussion by focusing on violence against civilians, an outcome that theory suggests should be affected by mechanization via both of these channels. Results from quantitative an…
The security implications of transnational population movements: A meta-analysis
Are migrants and refugees systematically linked to insecurity? This article, for the first time, takes stock of the interdisciplinary quantitative research on this question using meta-analysis. We compiled a unique dataset comprising more than 70 published studies across a variety of spatial and temporal scales covering 1951–2016. We show that an overall effect linking foreign-born populations to insecurity may exist, but there is little evidence…
Female combatants and rebel group behaviour: Evidence from Nepal
Recent research examines when and why women join rebel groups as combatants. However, we are only beginning to understand how their presence affects rebel group behaviour and conflict dynamics more generally. I address this gap by analysing how women's participation influences two dimensions of rebel behaviour: their relationship to civilians and their fighting performance. I argue that a greater number of female rebels decreases civilian victimi…
Indirect Governance at War: Delegation and Orchestration in Rebel Support
Instead of attacking their adversaries directly, states often do so indirectly by supporting rebel groups. While these support relationships vary considerably, existing research lacks a comprehensive account thereof. To explain states’ choice of support, we suggest differentiating between two modes of support relationships according to the control opportunities they offer states over rebels: while delegation enables “hands-on” control, “hands-off…
All that glitters is not gold: Relational events models with spurious events
As relational event models are an increasingly popular model for studying relational structures, the reliability of large-scale event data collection becomes more and more important. Automated or human-coded events often suffer from non-negligible false-discovery rates in event identification. And most sensor data are primarily based on actors’ spatial proximity for predefined time windows; hence, the observed events could relate either to a soci…
Female Combatants and Wartime Rape: Reconsidering the Role of Women in Armed Conflict
Whereas existing research posits that the presence of female fighters in armed groups decreases their propensity for wartime rape, one recent study tests this claim quantitatively and is unable to detect a statistically significant effect. This leads the author to conclude that female combatants do not decrease rape. Using that study's original data, this article reexamines the evidence for the relationship between female rebel combatants and war…
Diversionary Politics and Territorial Disputes: Evidence from Turkish Airspace Incursions
Diversionary theories of interstate conflict suggest that domestic problems push leaders to initiate hostilities against foreign foes in order to garner support. However, the empirical support for this proposition is mixed as critics point out that leaders should not start conflicts that can be extremely costly for them, potentially even removing them from office. We propose that while leaders may not initiate new conflicts, they do tap into exis…
The Effect of Child Soldiers on Rebel Violence against Civilians
Existing work describes child soldiers as very violent towards civilians. Challenging this, I posit that children’s effect on group behaviour is conditioned by rebels’ civilian support. Because they have weak pre-existing norms, children are both prone to normalize violence and susceptible to rebel efforts to control their use of violence. They should thus closely follow group rules in their behaviour towards civilians, implying a moderating effe…
The role of governmental weapons procurements in forecasting monthly fatalities in intrastate conflicts: A semiparametric hierarchical hurdle model
Accurate and interpretable forecasting models predicting spatially and temporally fine-grained changes in the numbers of intrastate conflict casualties are of crucial importance for policymakers and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Using a count data approach, we propose a hierarchical hurdle regression model to address the corresponding prediction challenge at the monthly PRIO-grid level. More precisely, we model the intensit…
The colonial roots of structural coup-proofing
Colonially inherited institutions are a key determinant of the regime type and economic outcomes of postcolonial countries. This study extends this claim to civil-military relations, arguing that former French colonies are especially likely to invest in structural coup-proofing. France created paramilitary units throughout its colonies for which many natives were recruited. After independence, these paramilitaries proved persistent and were conse…
Examining conflict management technique sequences in international claims
This study groups third-party conflict management techniques (CMTs) into binding and non-binding approaches to examine whether and how their sequence and, in more detail, changes therein explain the outcome of international issue claims. Third parties can intervene in disputes by providing good offices or mediation; they also engage with more binding approaches such as arbitration and adjudication. While the literature has established a solid und…
Female rebels and United Nations peacekeeping deployments
How does the presence of female rebel combatants during conflict influence the likelihood of United Nations post-conflict peacekeeping deployment? While past literature on peacekeeping emphasizes the role of conflict attributes and security council interests, only few studies investigate the importance of belligerent characteristics. We argue that, because dominant gender stereotypes paint women as peaceful, female rebel combatants lead domestic …
The Effect of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Global Armed Conflict: Early Evidence
As Covid-19 spreads around the world, international actors, including the United Nations, have called for a stop to armed conflict to facilitate efforts to fight the pandemic. At the same time, coronavirus may also trigger and intensify armed conflict due to its negative economic consequences and by offering windows of opportunity to opposition movements to attack distracted and weakened incumbents. We use real-time data on the spread of Covid-19…
Military Technology and Human Loss in Intrastate Conflict: The Conditional Impact of Arms Imports
Although often conjectured, there is a lack of empirical evidence whether international inflows of military technology render intrastate conflicts more violent. We address this question and argue that expansions in governments’ ability to fight aggravate the lethality of intrastate war. However, we expect this effect to be conditioned by rebels’ military endowments and their choice of tactics. Where rebels are weak, they avoid open combat, and ad…
Female Combatants and Wartime Rape: Reconsidering the Role of Women in Armed Conflict
Whereas existing research posits that the presence of female fighters in armed groups decreases their propensity for wartime rape, one recent study tests this claim quantitatively and is unable to detect a statistically significant effect. This leads the author to conclude that female combatants do not decrease rape. Using that study's original data, this article reexamines the evidence for the relationship between female rebel combatants and war…
Indirect Governance at War: Delegation and Orchestration in Rebel Support
Instead of attacking their adversaries directly, states often do so indirectly by supporting rebel groups. While these support relationships vary considerably, existing research lacks a comprehensive account thereof. To explain states’ choice of support, we suggest differentiating between two modes of support relationships according to the control opportunities they offer states over rebels: while delegation enables “hands-on” control, “hands-off…
How Mechanization Shapes Coups
Civil-military relations are characterized by a fundamental dilemma. To lower coup risk, leaders frequently empower the military, which satisfies the armed forces with the status quo and enables them to fight against threats challenging the civilian leadership. Simultaneously, a too powerful military itself constitutes a potential threat that is capable of overthrowing the government. Our research adds to this debate by examining the impact of me…
The colonial roots of structural coup-proofing
Colonially inherited institutions are a key determinant of the regime type and economic outcomes of postcolonial countries. This study extends this claim to civil-military relations, arguing that former French colonies are especially likely to invest in structural coup-proofing. France created paramilitary units throughout its colonies for which many natives were recruited. After independence, these paramilitaries proved persistent and were conse…
Female rebels and United Nations peacekeeping deployments
How does the presence of female rebel combatants during conflict influence the likelihood of United Nations post-conflict peacekeeping deployment? While past literature on peacekeeping emphasizes the role of conflict attributes and security council interests, only few studies investigate the importance of belligerent characteristics. We argue that, because dominant gender stereotypes paint women as peaceful, female rebel combatants lead domestic …
The role of governmental weapons procurements in forecasting monthly fatalities in intrastate conflicts: A semiparametric hierarchical hurdle model
Accurate and interpretable forecasting models predicting spatially and temporally fine-grained changes in the numbers of intrastate conflict casualties are of crucial importance for policymakers and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Using a count data approach, we propose a hierarchical hurdle regression model to address the corresponding prediction challenge at the monthly PRIO-grid level. More precisely, we model the intensit…
Secret Police Organizations and State Repression
Secret police are generally viewed as key institutions in autocrats’ repression apparatus. However, we lack clear empirical evidence on the link between secret police and repression. Instead, recent studies indicate that the surveillance provided by secret police reduces physical human rights abuses. This paper re-examines the relationship between secret police and physical state repression. We identify four mechanisms linking these variables, de…
Female combatants and rebel group behaviour: Evidence from Nepal
Recent research examines when and why women join rebel groups as combatants. However, we are only beginning to understand how their presence affects rebel group behaviour and conflict dynamics more generally. I address this gap by analysing how women's participation influences two dimensions of rebel behaviour: their relationship to civilians and their fighting performance. I argue that a greater number of female rebels decreases civilian victimi…
The Interwar Period International Trade in Arms: A New Dataset
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 …
Preventing Dissent: Secret Police and Protests in Dictatorships
This article examines the impact of secret police organizations on the occurrence of antiregime protests in authoritarian regimes. We argue that such organizations are related to lower levels of protests via two related mechanisms: intelligence gathering and an increased perception of risk among citizens, which reduce citizens' ability and willingness to mobilize, respectively. Using new data on secret police organizations in dictatorships coveri…
The dictator’s legionnaires: Foreign Recruitment, Coups, and Uprisings
Several countries recruit foreign nationals into their armed forces. This is despite the norm of citizen armies and the strong idea that individuals join the military to defend their home country while military service socializes them into good citizens. We argue that foreign recruits can have very specific benefits for some authoritarian governments. Because they lack strong links to society, their loyalties lie with whoever recruited and pays t…
The Effect of Child Soldiers on Rebel Violence against Civilians
Existing work describes child soldiers as very violent towards civilians. Challenging this, I posit that children’s effect on group behaviour is conditioned by rebels’ civilian support. Because they have weak pre-existing norms, children are both prone to normalize violence and susceptible to rebel efforts to control their use of violence. They should thus closely follow group rules in their behaviour towards civilians, implying a moderating effe…
Rage and the Machines? Force Mechanization and Violence against Civilians
There is an ongoing discussion regarding the role of mechanized forces in counterinsurgency warfare. Proponents note that they boost counterinsurgents’ ability to fight while critics point out that they diminish their ability to gather information. This note adds to this discussion by focusing on violence against civilians, an outcome that theory suggests should be affected by mechanization via both of these channels. Results from quantitative an…
The security implications of transnational population movements: A meta-analysis
Are migrants and refugees systematically linked to insecurity? This article, for the first time, takes stock of the interdisciplinary quantitative research on this question using meta-analysis. We compiled a unique dataset comprising more than 70 published studies across a variety of spatial and temporal scales covering 1951–2016. We show that an overall effect linking foreign-born populations to insecurity may exist, but there is little evidence…
Diversionary Politics and Territorial Disputes: Evidence from Turkish Airspace Incursions
Diversionary theories of interstate conflict suggest that domestic problems push leaders to initiate hostilities against foreign foes in order to garner support. However, the empirical support for this proposition is mixed as critics point out that leaders should not start conflicts that can be extremely costly for them, potentially even removing them from office. We propose that while leaders may not initiate new conflicts, they do tap into exis…
How mediator leadership transitions influence mediation effectiveness
Little is known about how transitions in the government of mediators affect conflict dynamics and resolution. To address this shortcoming, we study executive turnovers of mediators during ongoing interventions in civil war. Mediation effectiveness is largely driven by (trustworthy) information provision and sharing. Changes in mediators’ leaderships have the potential to undermine this, lowering mediation performance. Using data on civil conflict…
Military Technology and Human Loss in Intrastate Conflict: The Conditional Impact of Arms Imports
Although often conjectured, there is a lack of empirical evidence whether international inflows of military technology render intrastate conflicts more violent. We address this question and argue that expansions in governments’ ability to fight aggravate the lethality of intrastate war. However, we expect this effect to be conditioned by rebels’ military endowments and their choice of tactics. Where rebels are weak, they avoid open combat, and ad…
Diversionary Politics and Territorial Disputes: Evidence from Turkish Airspace Incursions
Diversionary theories of interstate conflict suggest that domestic problems push leaders to initiate hostilities against foreign foes in order to garner support. However, the empirical support for this proposition is mixed as critics point out that leaders should not start conflicts that can be extremely costly for them, potentially even removing them from office. We propose that while leaders may not initiate new conflicts, they do tap into exis…
The Effect of Child Soldiers on Rebel Violence against Civilians
Existing work describes child soldiers as very violent towards civilians. Challenging this, I posit that children’s effect on group behaviour is conditioned by rebels’ civilian support. Because they have weak pre-existing norms, children are both prone to normalize violence and susceptible to rebel efforts to control their use of violence. They should thus closely follow group rules in their behaviour towards civilians, implying a moderating effe…
The role of governmental weapons procurements in forecasting monthly fatalities in intrastate conflicts: A semiparametric hierarchical hurdle model
Accurate and interpretable forecasting models predicting spatially and temporally fine-grained changes in the numbers of intrastate conflict casualties are of crucial importance for policymakers and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Using a count data approach, we propose a hierarchical hurdle regression model to address the corresponding prediction challenge at the monthly PRIO-grid level. More precisely, we model the intensit…
The colonial roots of structural coup-proofing
Colonially inherited institutions are a key determinant of the regime type and economic outcomes of postcolonial countries. This study extends this claim to civil-military relations, arguing that former French colonies are especially likely to invest in structural coup-proofing. France created paramilitary units throughout its colonies for which many natives were recruited. After independence, these paramilitaries proved persistent and were conse…
Examining conflict management technique sequences in international claims
This study groups third-party conflict management techniques (CMTs) into binding and non-binding approaches to examine whether and how their sequence and, in more detail, changes therein explain the outcome of international issue claims. Third parties can intervene in disputes by providing good offices or mediation; they also engage with more binding approaches such as arbitration and adjudication. While the literature has established a solid und…
Female rebels and United Nations peacekeeping deployments
How does the presence of female rebel combatants during conflict influence the likelihood of United Nations post-conflict peacekeeping deployment? While past literature on peacekeeping emphasizes the role of conflict attributes and security council interests, only few studies investigate the importance of belligerent characteristics. We argue that, because dominant gender stereotypes paint women as peaceful, female rebel combatants lead domestic …
The Effect of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Global Armed Conflict: Early Evidence
As Covid-19 spreads around the world, international actors, including the United Nations, have called for a stop to armed conflict to facilitate efforts to fight the pandemic. At the same time, coronavirus may also trigger and intensify armed conflict due to its negative economic consequences and by offering windows of opportunity to opposition movements to attack distracted and weakened incumbents. We use real-time data on the spread of Covid-19…
Rage and the Machines? Force Mechanization and Violence against Civilians
There is an ongoing discussion regarding the role of mechanized forces in counterinsurgency warfare. Proponents note that they boost counterinsurgents’ ability to fight while critics point out that they diminish their ability to gather information. This note adds to this discussion by focusing on violence against civilians, an outcome that theory suggests should be affected by mechanization via both of these channels. Results from quantitative an…
The security implications of transnational population movements: A meta-analysis
Are migrants and refugees systematically linked to insecurity? This article, for the first time, takes stock of the interdisciplinary quantitative research on this question using meta-analysis. We compiled a unique dataset comprising more than 70 published studies across a variety of spatial and temporal scales covering 1951–2016. We show that an overall effect linking foreign-born populations to insecurity may exist, but there is little evidence…
Female combatants and rebel group behaviour: Evidence from Nepal
Recent research examines when and why women join rebel groups as combatants. However, we are only beginning to understand how their presence affects rebel group behaviour and conflict dynamics more generally. I address this gap by analysing how women's participation influences two dimensions of rebel behaviour: their relationship to civilians and their fighting performance. I argue that a greater number of female rebels decreases civilian victimi…
Indirect Governance at War: Delegation and Orchestration in Rebel Support
Instead of attacking their adversaries directly, states often do so indirectly by supporting rebel groups. While these support relationships vary considerably, existing research lacks a comprehensive account thereof. To explain states’ choice of support, we suggest differentiating between two modes of support relationships according to the control opportunities they offer states over rebels: while delegation enables “hands-on” control, “hands-off…
All that glitters is not gold: Relational events models with spurious events
As relational event models are an increasingly popular model for studying relational structures, the reliability of large-scale event data collection becomes more and more important. Automated or human-coded events often suffer from non-negligible false-discovery rates in event identification. And most sensor data are primarily based on actors’ spatial proximity for predefined time windows; hence, the observed events could relate either to a soci…
Female Combatants and Wartime Rape: Reconsidering the Role of Women in Armed Conflict
Whereas existing research posits that the presence of female fighters in armed groups decreases their propensity for wartime rape, one recent study tests this claim quantitatively and is unable to detect a statistically significant effect. This leads the author to conclude that female combatants do not decrease rape. Using that study's original data, this article reexamines the evidence for the relationship between female rebel combatants and war…
How Mechanization Shapes Coups
Civil-military relations are characterized by a fundamental dilemma. To lower coup risk, leaders frequently empower the military, which satisfies the armed forces with the status quo and enables them to fight against threats challenging the civilian leadership. Simultaneously, a too powerful military itself constitutes a potential threat that is capable of overthrowing the government. Our research adds to this debate by examining the impact of me…
Foreign Legionnaires and Military Mutinies
The composition of the armed forces is, by now, well established as a major factor determining the risk of coups d’état. However, military discontent not only manifests in the form of coups but also as mutinies. This latter form of troop rebellion has received little empirical attention. We examine how the practice of recruiting foreigners into the armed forces affects the likelihood of such events and develop two arguments regarding a direct and…
Looking for the International in international relations and political science: Evidence from author locations in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations , 1999-2023
Political science and international relations have undergone substantive internationalisation over the last 25 years. This short article uses a dataset covering all papers published in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations to investigate how authorship in the journal has changed over time in light of this. It finds that while, overall, BJPIR has been dominated by authors based at institutions in the United Kingdom, the journ…
Preventing Dissent: Secret Police and Protests in Dictatorships
This article examines the impact of secret police organizations on the occurrence of antiregime protests in authoritarian regimes. We argue that such organizations are related to lower levels of protests via two related mechanisms: intelligence gathering and an increased perception of risk among citizens, which reduce citizens' ability and willingness to mobilize, respectively. Using new data on secret police organizations in dictatorships coveri…
Secret Police Organizations and State Repression
Secret police are generally viewed as key institutions in autocrats’ repression apparatus. However, we lack clear empirical evidence on the link between secret police and repression. Instead, recent studies indicate that the surveillance provided by secret police reduces physical human rights abuses. This paper re-examines the relationship between secret police and physical state repression. We identify four mechanisms linking these variables, de…
The dictator’s legionnaires: Foreign Recruitment, Coups, and Uprisings
Several countries recruit foreign nationals into their armed forces. This is despite the norm of citizen armies and the strong idea that individuals join the military to defend their home country while military service socializes them into good citizens. We argue that foreign recruits can have very specific benefits for some authoritarian governments. Because they lack strong links to society, their loyalties lie with whoever recruited and pays t…
Money first? Strategic and economic interests in the international arms trade network, 1920-1936
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 f…
Arming the new Sheriff in Town: Arms Transfers in the Wake of Leadership Turnover
While a large existing body of work considers the international determinants and consequences of arms transfers, research on their domestic sources is rare. However, anecdotal evidence highlights their importance. This paper addresses this gap by linking arms transfers to research on the consequences of leadership turnover for interstate relations. It develops the expectation that leadership turnover in a recipient country should result in reduce…
Exponential Random Graph Models for Dynamic Signed Networks: An Application to International Relations
Substantive research in the Social Sciences regularly investigates signed networks, where edges between actors are positive or negative. One often-studied example within International Relations for this type of network consists of countries that can cooperate with or fight against each other. These analyses often build on structural balance theory, one of the earliest and most prominent network theories. While the theorization and description of …
The Interwar Period International Trade in Arms: A New Dataset
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 …
Political science (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Law (15 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Criminology (8 works)