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Arms possession or arms transfers? Divisions and future directions in arms trade research

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ABSTRACT Within the subfield of arms trade research, scholars tend to focus either on the possession of arms or on the transfer of arms. Work on arms possession analyzes the relationship between a state’s arsenal and outcomes of interest like conflict or human rights violations. Work on arms transfers often takes an implicit network approach and looks at the relationships created or amplified when a weapon is given from one actor to another. These literatures rarely speak to one another, or to policy work on the arms trade. As a result, arms trade research has reached divergent conclusions why and when states send and seek arms. This article highlights divisions and divergences in arms trade research, and presents an agenda for future research based on a guiding set of theoretical and methodological questions.

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