Arms Transfers and Democratization: A Positive or Negative Relationship?

A handful of scholars have recently examined the role of arms transfers on external conflict and internal stability, showing that arms transfers can have an important impact on a state’s decision to strike a conflictual pose within a rivalry, or a military’s decision to carry out a coup. Little work, however, has been conducted to better understand how arms transfers effect the democratic consolidation of recipient states. Given that arms transfers bolster the military, what effect should we expect this to have on the process of democratic consolidation? In this paper, I draw on theories of arms transfers, militarization, and democratization to argue that arms transfers should expand the material power of the military, and thus increase their stake in the handling of domestic affairs by the government. The result should be an escalated willingness to intervene in the state’s affairs via involvement in elections, the use of domestic security forces for political repression, and participation in the budgetary process of the state. I test this theory by regressing Polity scores and coups on arms transfers on all states from 1950 to 2006. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]