Choose Your Weapon: Political Economy Approaches to Arming

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Deciding what and how much weapons a state should acquire, as well as when to do so, is one of the most profound choices a government can make, with long-lasting effects on its international and domestic political environment. As the world appears to be undergoing another round of international great power competition and defense budgets rise once more, the panel investigates this decision using a number of theoretical and methodological approaches. Arms programs are future-oriented, and thus ideas of the future of war shape investments in ways not explained by present-day material or rational factors. Complex weapons can rarely be developed autarkically, but how does the state balance its dependence on other countries with its natural desire for autonomy? On the other hand, how does a supplier state balance transferring technology, potentially supplying your competition and diminishing one’s military advantage, with the desire to make a sale and support one’s clients? The papers on this panel therefore study how choices about arms investment and sales to understand power transitions, vulnerability to coercion, hegemonic leadership, and choice of grand strategy.

Sub Unit

• Division 19: International Security

Individual Presentations

• Can Deep Engagement Make Rules? The Struggles of Post-Cold War Export Controls - Charles Eugene Gholz, University of Notre Dame

• Arms Collaboration: Weapons Interdependence, not Weaponized Interdependence - Kaija E. Schilde, Boston University; Florian Bodamer, Boston University

• Creating Competition: Arms Exports, Tech Transfer, and New Weapons Producers - Jonathan D. Caverley, Naval War College

Chair

• Jacquelyn Schneider Stanford University

Discussant

• Jennifer Spindel University of New Hampshire