The importance of nationalism force in the development of autonomous major-weapons production in less-powerful nations

Realist theories of international relations produce a meaningful hypothesis about defense production: a state should pursue military capability according to its national capability; therefore, when a state has the ability to build self-defense autonomy, it should construct a weapons industry. It is not certain, however, that every state pursues self-sufficiency in its defense industry just because it has the internal capacity and external opportunity to do so. Evidence shows that capability and external opportunity alone cannot sufficiently explain the development-level of indigenous defense industries.; This study focuses on three factors in order to explain the variance in the development of autonomous defense production among less-powerful nations. They are internal capability, external opportunity, and domestic ideational force. This research finds nationalism, as the ideational force, to be a cause of both state preferences and political movements that favor more autonomous arms production. It concludes that a dynamic mix of the internal, external, and ideational factor (nationalism force) determines each nation's level of autonomous major-weapons production.; The quantitative study, dealing with 41 mid-sized economies, finds that the ideational factor was significant in explaining why some countries have higher levels of autonomous production capability than others of similar capabilities. The two case studies, based on the logic of the most similar systems design, examine the impact of nationalism force in more detail. The first case study deals with South Korea and Taiwan; the second one deals with Brazil and Mexico. The evidence showed that nationalist practices in South Korea and in Brazil made them more autonomous in arms production than Taiwan and Mexico, respectively. Based on two case studies, this study concludes that nationalism force determined the perceived autonomy and prestige interest of the nation, which in turn acted as motivational forces for the indigenous production of major weapons.