Bread, butter, barricade: Economic grievance, military industry and mutinies

Roya Izadi and Lindsey Pruett
Additional contact information
Roya Izadi: Department of Political Science, 4260University of Rhode Island, USA
Lindsey Pruett: Department of Government, Hamilton College, USA

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2026, vol. 43, issue 4, 391-412

Abstract: Military involvement in the economy is a crucial aspect of civil–military relations. However, the impacts of economic ventures on the rank-and-file have not been examined empirically. In this article, we demonstrate that military economic involvement decreases the risk of mutinies by providing private goods that promote rent-seeking behavior among lower-ranking soldiers. Through military-owned enterprises, soldiers access jobs, benefits and off-book revenues (tax breaks, subsidies, favorable contracts, etc.) that are unavailable to civilians. Further, military elites may use these resources to subsidize military budgets and ameliorate economic grievances in the lower ranks. Using novel, cross-national data on military involvement in the economy and information on about 2500 military-run firms, we show that militaries with a greater stake in the economy are less likely to experience mutinies than countries with no and lower rates of economic involvement. Similar patterns hold for risk of mass defection.

Keywords: Civil–military relations; defection; military involvement in the economy; mutinies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07388942251374474 (text/html)

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:sae:compsc:v:43:y:2026:i:4:p:391-412

DOI: 10.1177/07388942251374474

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Conflict Management and Peace Science from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().