Arms Supply and Proliferation Networks

Abstract

The study of the transfer of small arms and light weapons, major conventional weapons, and weapons or mass destruction is ripe for the use of network theories and methods. Yet so far, there has been little quantitative or qualitative network analysis of these networks. Questions pertaining to global and regional arms flows and the related matters of international insecurity and criminality should lend themselves quite well to this mode of analysis. Some of the main challenges for their application to these questions derive from the limited availability of data. Nonetheless, the extant literature contains a number of implicit or explicit hypotheses that could be explored or tested using network analysis. This chapter gives an overview of the main factors shaping these networks through supply and demand. It then discusses these networks’ structural characteristics, focusing on the tradeoffs between security and efficiency embodied in them; the pressures on networks to adopt more or less centralized forms; and how different layers in networks relate to each other and adapt to different constraints such as geography. Finally, it reviews some existing datasets and network analyses (surprisingly few at present) and concludes with a discussion of the potential for network analysis to inform the study of arms transfer networks. Given the general import of these networks for both security studies and policy relevance, we expect to see a renaissance in the study of arms supply and proliferation networks.

Keywords: weapons of mass destruction, proliferation networks, small arms and light weapons, major conventional weapons, illicit arms trade