Although a prevalent technology of conflict, the impact of small arms imports on the risk of intrastate conflict outbreak has not been examined so far. This article argues that small arms not only enhance general military capabilities, but also contribute to state capacities necessary for conflict prevention. These two mechanisms are incorporated in a formal model of power shifts. The derived hypotheses are tested on 146 countries for the period 1993–2014. Using split-population and penalized fixed-effects logit models as innovative estimation methods for rare-events data, small arms imports are found to have no or even a risk-reducing impact.

中文翻译：

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武装冲突，武装和平？小武器进口如何影响州内冲突风险

尽管是一种流行的冲突技术，但迄今为止尚未研究小武器进口对州内冲突爆发风险的影响。本文认为，小武器不仅可以增强一般军事能力，而且还有助于增强预防冲突所需的国家能力。这两种机制都包含在权力转移的正式模型中。1993-2014 年期间在 146 个国家中检验了推导出的假设。使用人口分裂和惩罚固定效应 logit 模型作为罕见事件数据的创新估计方法，发现小武器进口没有甚至降低风险的影响。