Findings in title quoted from the linked summary^1 about a paper^2 in The Economic Journal.

From the linked summary^1 released by the University of Copenhagen:

>The study minutely details the spread of 29 ground-breaking military technologies in all independent states in the period 1820-2010 (see box) as well as the form of government in these states.

>Based on statistical analysis of the data, the study establishes connections between states’ access to specific weapons, their economy and form of government.

>“In short, the more protesters a regime can kill using as few resources as possible, the stronger it will be.

>“But this is the first scientific study to show that regimes’ access to weapons do have a systematic, measurable effect on democratisation,” says Associate Professor Asger Mose Wingender from the Department of Economics, who conducted the study together with Professor Jacob Gerner Hariri from the Department of Political Science.

>The extensive study has taken seven years to complete. The survey of the spread of weapons technology alone contains 596,443 data points. Furthermore, the study includes a comprehensive survey of weapons history.

From the paper^2 by J.G. Hariri and A.M. Wingender:

>We collect a new, comprehensive data set tracking the adoption of 29 groundbreaking military technologies in all independent states in the period 1820–2010. Each technology represents a discrete improvement in the capacity to inflict violence.

>Based on these data, we first show that military technology spreads faster across borders than economic modernisation.

>We proceed to show that the swift diffusion of military technology impeded democratisation. To this end, we estimate linear probability models of democratisation in a panel of autocracies with a measure of military technology derived from our data set as the main explanatory variable.

^1 Modern arms technologies help autocratic rulers stay in power, 25 Jan. 2023, https://politicalscience.ku.dk/about/news/2023/modern-arms-technologies-help-autocratic-rulers-stay-in-power/

^2 Jacob Gerner Hariri, Asger Mose Wingender, Jumping the Gun: How Dictators Got Ahead of Their Subjects, The Economic Journal, Volume 133, Issue 650, February 2023, Pages 728–760, https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueac073