Loyalty for Sale? Military Spending and Coups d'Etat

Gabriel Leon

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge

Abstract: Coups d'etat continue to be common around the world, often leading to changes in leaders and institutions. We examine the relationship between military spending and coups and find that (i) successful coups increase military spending by more than failed attempts, and (ii) coups are more likely when military spending as a share of GDP is relatively low. Our identification strategy exploits the conditional independence between a coup's outcome and the change in military spending that follows it. We interpret this as evidence that the military may stage coups in order to increase its

Keywords: coups; income; conflict; military spending; political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H56 N40 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-02-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Loyalty for sale? Military spending and coups d’etat (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camdae:1209

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