Corruption and the military in politics: theory and evidence from around the world

Muhammad Majeed and Ronald MacDonald

Working Papers from Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow

Abstract: Recent theoretical developments and case study evidence suggests a relationship between the military in politics and corruption. This study contributes to this literature by analyzing theoretically and empirically the role of the military in politics and corruption for the first time. By drawing on a cross sectional and panel data set covering a large number of countries, over the period 1984-2007, and using a variety of econometric methods substantial empirical support is found for a positive relationship between the military in politics and corruption. In sum, our results reveal that a one standard deviation increase in the military in politics leads to a 0.22 unit increase in corruption index. This relationship is shown to be robust to a variety of specification changes, different econometric techniques, different sample sizes, alternative corruption indices and the exclusion of outliers. This study suggests that the explanatory power of the military in politics is at least as important as the conventionally accepted causes of corruption, such as economic development.

Keywords: corruption; military in politics; cross sectional; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D72 H1 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: Corruption and the Military in Politics: Theory and Evidence from around the World (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gla:glaewp:2010_34

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