Most firearms recovered from crime scenes in Mexico originate in legal U.S. retail markets, yet little is known about whether federal enforcement constrains this diversion. This article examines how compliance citations issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) affect subsequent firearms trafficking from U.S. Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) to Mexico. ATF inspection-violation records are merged with more than 12,000 firearms traced from Mexican seizures and U.S. trafficking court cases, exploiting within-dealer variation over time. Across multiple model specifications, ATF citations are strongly associated with reductions in trafficking—each additional citation corresponds to a 20–44% decline in trafficked firearms, and cited dealers contribute substantially fewer trafficked guns than comparable uncited retailers. These results suggest that even limited regulatory enforcement can meaningfully disrupt illicit firearms supply chains upstream of cross-border smuggling.

The recent growth in international tension has been associated with countries either increasing their military spending or discussing such increases—consequently, defense budgeting has attracted increased attention. This article reviews the U.K. defense budget in an historical context. It sets out the position in mid-2024 when the newly elected Labour Government commissioned a Strategic Defence Review. It summarizes the planning process and the government’s budget constraints; considers the issues involved in measuring the defense budget and making international comparisons; reviews trends in the defense budget; and the choices that need to be made between spending on personnel, conventional equipment, and nuclear weapons.

For European arms-producing countries, launching a cooperative program represents a compromise between preserving their domestic industrial base and achieving an affordable acquisition. Nevertheless, scientific literature is marred with criticisms regarding the effectiveness of such an approach. Paradoxically, this does not prevent European states from committing to new cooperative programs—the European Commission has set up mechanisms for improving the effectiveness of European defense industry based, de facto, on incentives to launch cooperative programs. This article looks at the place of cooperative programs in Europe to understand whether the new initiatives of the European Union can succeed in improving the effectiveness of military spending as well as enhancing European strategic autonomy. It analyzes the organization of the European armament market to explain why cooperative programs appear unavoidable. It explores how the European Commission could overcome current limitations through community-funded programs, given that such funding would foster the emergence of a European defense technological and industrial base.

U.S. government security along the U.S.–Mexican border has been increasingly militarized. This domestic militarization has been influenced by U.S. government military intervention abroad. Preparing for and executing foreign interventions involves investing in physical and human capital to effectively coerce and control the target population. The U.S. government’s “war on drugs” and “war on terror” created the conditions for this capital to be repurposed for domestic use in border-security efforts. While foreign policy created the conditions for border militarization, border militarization has also influenced foreign interventions. This article explores the symbiotic relationship between U.S. border militarization and foreign policy.

A game is developed where an incumbent chooses between benefits provision to the population, which decreases the probability of revolution endogenously, and fighting with a challenger. Thereafter the challenger chooses a degree of fighting, which determines rent sharing. A successful revolution enables the challenger to replace the incumbent. An unsuccessful revolution preserves the status quo, or causes standoff or coalition. The four possibilities of incumbent replacement, status quo, standoff, or coalition combine with the incumbent either repressing (providing benefits below a threshold) or accommodating (providing benefits above a threshold) the population, for a total of eight outcomes. Such a rich conceptualization of eight outcomes of civil war is missing in the literature. We show how an advantaged versus disadvantaged incumbent deters or fights with a challenger, and provides versus does not provide benefits to the population. The eight outcomes are mapped to 87 revolutions 1961-2011.

Currently there exist no data series comparing arms production values among countries. The article outlines three methods for generating such data series based largely on already available data series relevant to arms production, in particular series on arms imports and exports, procurement, and turnover figures from the world’s largest arms producing companies. All three methods have major shortcomings and limitations but with additional effort in data collection they can provide a basis for comparing arms production values among countries as well as for regional and global totals. Furthermore, as the three methods use different definitions of the scope of arms production, comparison of the data produced by them can provide additional insights.

Across the world, the perceived common ground regarding global safety and security is changing. Facing divergent threats, in addition to their cooperation on defense states will increasingly need to collaborate on additional dimensions to protect their citizens. Hence, next to the military burden-sharing debate, questions as to whether states are contributing their fair shares in other arenas as well will be subject to debate also. This article analyzes national contributions by 28 NATO states to five dimensions connected to today’s safety and security situation, namely military expenditures, foreign aid, combating terror financing, carbon dioxide reductions, and refugee protection. We find that states vary in their contributions to safety and security, each preferring to fund some dimensions more than others. We suggest that acknowledging and allowing for a certain degree of complementarity among states could help transform the debate on burden-sharing, which is cost-focused, to include benefit-sharing behavior. Thus, it may become possible to value every country’s contributions and, building on national strengths, to further cooperation for safety and security along all necessary dimensions.

In this article I argue that the data collection methods and procedures behind the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) global arms trade database can also be used to approximate domestic purchases of local production of major conventional arms. The total output of domestic arms industries would then be the sum of what is domestically retained (procured) plus arms exports, if any. The feasibility of this idea is tested by presenting new data on domestic arms production for five South American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela) between 1960 and 2015. The results show the critical role government purchases play in maintaining domestic arms industries.

The focus in the security and development debate is on collective violence and the World Bank’s World Development Report 2017 is typical by mainly considering the effects of organized armed conflict. In this article I argue that interpersonal violence affects many more people globally and should receive more attention as well as aid. The adverse consequences from interpersonal violence on socioeconomic development are likely to be large but much of this violence is hidden in plain sight. Women and children are at particularly high risk of being victims of violence but since most of this violence is perpetrated in the domestic sphere it is less likely to affect the collective conscience.

The Oslo peace process established a modified economic union between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Economic unions require extensive collaboration and are generally found between states that enjoy pacific relations and are looking to deepen integration and political ties. The choice of an economic union between these adversaries is puzzling given that the aim of the peace process was to disentangle Israelis and Palestinians by establishing two separate states. Today, after the optimism surrounding the process has faded, it is easy to see the arrangement as a perpetuation of Israeli control over Palestinian life. However, such assessments fail to consider, first, the depth of the negotiations; second, the significant differences between the outcome of the negotiations and what was previously imposed by Israel; and, third, the gap between what was negotiated and what was later implemented. This article traces the genealogy of the economic union by exploring all three factors. While the negotiators did not start with a tabula rasa, they attempted to alter the existing economic arrangement along the European neo-functionalist model of integration. This approach was later largely abandoned, and what followed bore little resemblance to the positive spillover effects in Europe.