Boys and Their Toys: Leaders’ Prestige and the Import of Major Weapon Systems

Within international relations the study of the state is being enhanced by an increased focus on the leaders of states. In particular, there is an ever growing body of research separating out the type of leader a state has; e.g. presidential, parliamentary, strongman, junta, boss, and machine (Cheibub and Gandhi 2004; Debs and Goemans 2010; Lai and Slater 2006; Weeks 2012, 2014). We build upon this literature by examining the arms import patterns of each category. The importance of major weapon system imports is that they are useful in many areas of domestic and international security – for better or worse – and there are reasons to expect for different types of leaders to behave differently. In this paper we examine the arms import patters of different types of leaders and argue that militaristic regimes will have higher level of arms imports – hardly a novel or surprising argument. Our primary contribution comes from expanding on the leader and arms import literature by bringing in the role that prestige plays in leaders’ decisions. We examine the prestige that different types of major weapon systems provide leaders by looking at the type of weapons; e.g. artillery, air defense systems, armored vehicles, tanks along with transport, support, and combat helicopters/fixed-wing aircraft. Different leaders and the military have different logistical and strategic needs that should drive import decision-making, but historically leaders have imported weapons they wanted in addition to weapons they need. The primary example of this outcome is in sub-Saharan Africa after the second wave of decolonization where leaders desired an air force (preferably jet aircraft) despite lacking any security threats justifying the expenditures.