Coups d’état and defense spending: a counterfactual analysis

Vincenzo Bove and Roberto Nisticò ()

Public Choice, 2014, vol. 161, issue 3, 344 pages

Abstract: We explore how institutional set-ups, in particular changes in political institutions through coups d’état, can affect the way military expenditures are determined. We use a counterfactual approach, the synthetic control method, and compare the evolution of the military burden for 40 countries affected by coups with the evolution of a synthetic counterfactual that replicates the initial conditions and the potential outcomes of the countries of interest before exposure to coups. Our case studies suggest that successful coups result in a large increase in the military burden. However, when no effects or a decrease in the defense burden are found, it is often the consequence of a democratization process triggered by the coup. These results are in keeping with recent theoretical developments on the bargaining power of the military in authoritarian regimes. Failed coups, by contrast, produce a smaller, and mostly positive, effect on the military burden, possibly as a result of the incumbent’s strategy to avert further challenges to the stability of the regime by buying off the military. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: Military expenditure; Coups d’état; Synthetic control method; H11; H56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-014-0202-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Coups d'état and Defense Spending: A Counterfactual Analysis (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:161:y:2014:i:3:p:321-344

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-014-0202-2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().