Authors - Anshika Srivastava, Rojalin Patri Abstract - This study explores whether arms and armed forces increase the probability of armed conflict within a country. Though several studies in literature have highlighted the cases where arms and armed forces have influenced armed conflict within a country, none of them have provided empirical evidence to support this phenomenon. This study attempts to bridge the gap by providing a quantitative analysis across 45 countries over 28 years and further substantiates the arguments laid in qualitative studies. Random effect panel logistic estimates and year-wise logistic estimates have been used to capture the overall as well as year-wise significance of arms and armed forces on armed conflict within the country, respectively. Similarly, when the number of armed forces increase by one million, the odds for armed conflict becomes 3.97 times more and when military expenditure increase by 1%, the odds for armed conflict becomes 9.06 times more than before. These insights point towards the fact that arms, armed forces and militarism don’t necessarily help reduce violence.
