Military Technology and Human Loss in Intrastate Conflict

The Conditional Impact of Arms Imports

Bibliographic Data

ID6286232
AuthorsMarius Mehrl (0000-0002-5825-9256, University of Essex), Paul W Thurner (0000-0001-7336-9878, Department of Political Science and Empirical Political Research, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume64
Issue6
Pages1172-1196
Publication date2020-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Conflict Resolution (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0027 • E-ISSN: 1552-8766
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0022002719893446
OpenAlexW2990699791
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited66

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 additional governmental arms imports have no effect on the number of casualties. In contrast, governmental arms imports cause human losses to multiply when rebels have achieved military parity or superiority and, as a consequence, use conventional combat tactics. This hypothesis is tested on the number of battle-related deaths in intrastate conflict, 1989 to 2011, using, for the first time, data on governmental imports of both major conventional weapons and small arms. Results support our propositions and are robust to instrumenting for imports of both types of weapons

Armed conflict · Battle · Development economics · Economics · Empirical evidence · Geography · International trade · Nuclear weapon · Political economy · Political science · Small arms · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies · Economic Sanctions and International Relations · Law · Political Conflict and Governance

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub