The international trade network in small arms and light weapons is considered to be the major reason for the rise of new wars after the end of the Cold War. In this study we for the first time delineate descriptively the structure and the dynamics of this trade network. Using political economy models of arms supply and demand as well as gravity-type reasoning we derive hypotheses on the causes of bilateral arms transfers. Inspired by recent network models we investigate hyperdyadic dependencies. More specifically, we test whether major conventional weapons transfers systematically coevolve with small arms and light weapons deals, or whether the latter exhibit their own dynamics. We use so-called temporal exponential random graph models.
