Arming the new Sheriff in Town: Arms Transfers in the Wake of Leadership Turnover

While a large existing body of work considers the international determinants and consequences of arms transfers, research on their domestic sources is rare. However, anecdotal evidence highlights their importance. This paper addresses this gap by linking arms transfers to research on the consequences of leadership turnover for interstate relations. It develops the expectation that leadership turnover in a recipient country should result in reduced arms orders from previous suppliers, given that new leaders should introduce uncertainty into diplomatic relations and tend to change their countries’ foreign policy behavior. This should especially be the case when new leaders are affiliated with a different support coalition than their predecessors, and when political power is highly concentrated in the executive. These expectations are tested using global dyadic data on leadership turnover and arms orders. Surprisingly, across a range of operationalization and modeling strategies, there is no empirical support for the expectation that leadership turnover decreases arms orders filed with previous suppliers. This research raises important questions regarding the domestic sources of states’ foreign policy behavior and politico-strategic role of arms supply relationships between states, especially highlighting important future directions for research on the consequences of leadership transitions.