| AA |
German Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) |
| APL |
anti-personnel landmines |
| ATT |
Arms Trade Treaty |
| BAE |
British Aerospace/BAE Systems |
| CAT |
Conventional Arms Transfer Talks |
| CCW |
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons |
| CDU |
Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands) |
| CI |
confidence intervals |
| COCOM |
Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls |
| DOS |
U.S. Department of State |
| ECOWAS |
Economic Community of West African States |
| EU |
European Union |
| GDP |
gross domestic product |
| HRW |
Human Rights Watch |
| IANSA |
International Action Network on Small Arms |
| ICBL |
International Campaign to Ban Landmines |
| IR |
international relations |
| MCW |
major conventional weapons |
| MIC |
military-industrial complex |
| NATO |
North Atlantic Treaty Organization |
| NGO |
nongovernmental organization |
| NISAT |
Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers |
| NRA |
National Rifle Association |
| OAS |
Organization of American States |
| OSCE |
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe |
| P5 |
United Nations Security Council Permanent Members |
| PD-13 |
Presidential Directive 13 |
| PRB |
Poudrières réunies de Belgique |
| PTS |
Political Terror Scale |
| SALW |
small arms and light weapons |
| SAS |
Small Arms Survey |
| SE |
standard errors |
| SIPRI |
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute |
| SPD |
Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) |
| TIV |
trend-indicator value |
| UN |
United Nations |
| UNGGE |
United Nations Group of Governmental Experts |
| UNPOA |
United Nations Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (or just UN Programme of Action on Small Arms) |