Suchergebnisse

Does military rule make a state more belligerent internationally? Several studies have recently established that military autocracies are more likely than civilian autocracies to deploy and use military force in pursuit of foreign policy objectives. I argue that military regimes are more likely to resort to military force because they are located in more hostile security environments, and not because they are inherently aggressive. First, I show that rule by military institution is more likely to emerge and exist in states facing external territorial threats. Second, by examining the relationship between military autocracies and conflict initiation, I find that once I control for states' territorial threats, the statistical association between military regimes and conflict initiation disappears. Additionally, more evidence suggests that civilian dictatorships are more conflict-prone than their military counterparts when I account for unobserved dyad heterogeneity. The results are consistent across different measures of international conflict and authoritarian regimes.

Recent events in three West African states-Ghana, Liberia, and Upper Volta-raise questions as to whether there has been a change in the nature of military coups and military regimes in Africa. All three regimes started off as "populist'"; that is, leaders tried to have direct contact with followers, attacked established institutions, and showed impatience with formal legality and established hierarchies. But in Upper Volta and Ghana, the caste nature of the military was itself called into question. This did not happen in Liberia, and the country quickly moved back toward a personalistic, conventional-type military regime. This essay explores the limits of the innovations which have occurred in Ghana and Upper Volta; it also assesses the meanings of these experiments for the possible evolution of African regimes by making comparisons among the three cases, as well as between them and Afro-Marxist regimes.

Does military rule make a state more belligerent internationally? Several studies have recently established that military autocracies are more likely than civilian autocracies to deploy and use military force in pursuit of foreign policy objectives. I argue that military regimes are more likely to resort to military force because they are located in more hostile security environments, and not because they are inherently aggressive. First, I show that rule by military institution is more likely to emerge and exist in states facing external territorial threats. Second, by examining the relationship between military autocracies and conflict initiation, I find that once I control for states' territorial threats, the statistical association between military regimes and conflict initiation disappears. Additionally, more evidence suggests that civilian dictatorships are more conflict-prone than their military counterparts when I account for unobserved dyad heterogeneity. The results are consistent across different measures of international conflict and authoritarian regimes.