Soldiers or politicians? Institutions, conflict, and the military’s role in politics

Gabriel Leon

Oxford Economic Papers, 2014, vol. 66, issue 2, 533-556

Abstract: One of the most striking institutional differences across countries is the extent to which their militaries intervene in politics. This article examines the role of war in generating these differences. It presents a model that shows that when governance institutions are weak, increasing military spending makes a country more likely to win in a war and increases the probability that coups succeed. An incumbent can avoid coups by strengthening governance institutions, but this limits the rents he can extract. Both the optimal choice of military spending and the strength of governance institutions depend on the probability of war. The article predicts a non-monotonic relationship between the frequency of wars and coups and presents empirical evidence consistent with this prediction.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpt024 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:oxecpp:v:66:y:2014:i:2:p:533-556.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal

More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().