The Effects of the Security Environment on Military Expenditures: Pooled Analyses of 165 Countries, 1950-2000

Countries' military expenditures differ greatly across both space and time. This study examines the determinants of military spending, with particular reference to the importance of the external security environment. Using the liberal-realist model of international relations, we first estimate the probability that two countries will be involved in a fatal militarized interstate dispute. We then aggregate these ex ante estimates of the likelihood of dyadic conflict, calculating the annual joint probability that a country will be involved in a fatal dispute. This is our measure of the external threat. We then estimate the level of military spending by country and year as a function of the security environment, arms races with foes and the defense expenditures of friendly countries, states' involvement in actual military conflict, economic output, and various other political variables. In analyses of a panel of 165 countries, 1950 to 2000, we find that the security environment is a powerful determinant of military spending. Indeed, our prospectively measured estimate of the external threat is more influential than any of several influences known only ex post. Our best estimate is that a one percentage point rise in the probability of a fatal dispute leads to a 3 percent increase in military spending.Military spending, Security threat, Arms race, Militarized disputes, Democracy, Alliances

Comparative Public Health: The Political Economy of Human Misery and Well‐Being

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147083/1/j.0020-8833.2004.00292.x.pd

The Effects of the Security Environment on Military Expenditures: Pooled Analyses of 165 Countries, 1950-2000

Countries’ military expenditures differ greatly across both space and time. This study examines the determinants of military spending, with particular reference to the importance of the external security environment. Using the liberal-realist model of international relations, we first estimate the probability that two countries will be involved in a fatal militarized interstate dispute. We then aggregate these ex ante estimates of the likelihood of dyadic conflict, calculating the annual joint probability that a country will be involved in a fatal dispute. This is our measure of the external threat. We then estimate the level of military spending by country and year as a function of the security environment, arms races with foes and the defense expenditures of friendly countries, states’ involvement in actual military conflict, economic output, and various other political variables. In analyses of a panel of 165 countries, 1950 to 2000, we find that the security environment is a powerful determinant of military spending. Indeed, our prospectively measured estimate of the external threat is more influential than any of several influences known only ex post. Our best estimate is that a one percentage point rise in the probability of a fatal dispute leads to a 3 percent increase in military spending

Diminished Expectations of Nuclear War and Increased Personal Savings: Evidence From Individual Survey Data

At the end of 1983 Gallup polls showed that 52 percent of Americans thought that the probability of a world war in the next 10 years was 50% or higher; by 1989 the percentage had dropped to 29%. Fear of war of this pervasiveness is bound to have an effect on decisions about present versus uncertain future consumption. This paper investigates the cross-sectional relationship between saving and fear of war using responses to telephone surveys conducted during April and October of 1990. The analysis shows that an individual's professed level of fear about the likelihood of nuclear war was significantly negatively related to the probability of being a saver rather than a dissaver, to changes in actual saving, and to saving plans relative to actual savings. Fear of war had an independent effect controlling for many demographic, economic and psychological characteristics. These results are broadly consistent with other evidence on the relationship between aggregate saving and fear of war over time and across countries.

Networked international politics

Network theory and methods are becoming increasingly used to study the causes and consequences of conflict. Network analysis allows researchers to develop a better understanding of the causal dynamics and structural geometry of the complex web of interdependencies at work in the onset, incidence, and diffusion of conflict and peace. This issue features new theoretical and empirical research demonstrating how properly accounting for networked interdependencies has profound implications for our understanding of the processes thought to be responsible for the conflict behavior of state and non-state actors. The contributors examine the variation in networks of states and transnational actors to explain outcomes related to international conflict and peace. They highlight how networked interdependencies affect conflict and cooperation in a broad range of areas at the center of international relations scholarship. It is helpful to distinguish between three uses of networks, namely: (1) as theoretical tools, (2) as measurement tools, and (3) as inferential tools. The introduction discusses each of these uses and shows how the contributions rely on one or several of them. Next, Monte Carlo simulations are used to illustrate one of the strengths of network analysis, namely that it helps researchers avoid biased inferences when the data generating process underlying the observed data contains extradyadic interdependencies. </jats:p

Tradeoffs in Trade Data: Do Our Assumptions Affect Our Results?

Researchers investigating the link between trade and peace often face a severe problem of list-wise deletion from missing trade data. Attempts to mitigate this problem include assuming that most observations are zero or imputing the values of such flows. We compare two frequently used trade data sets (the Gleditsch data set and the Correlates of War Project data set). We classify individual observations as observed, constructed or missing. We demonstrate that state attributes are systematically related to different categories of trade data. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we also find that replacing some missing data with estimated values tends to inflate the effects of trade in conflict models, although the effects differ by data set

The coexistence of peace and conflict in South America: toward a new conceptualization of types of peace

South America's predominant democratic regimes and its increasing interdependence on regional trade have not precluded the emergence of militarized crises between Colombia and Venezuela or the revival of boundary claims between Chile and Peru. This way, how can we characterize a zone that, in spite of its flourishing democracy and dense economic ties, remain involved in territorial disputes for whose resolution the use of force has not yet been discarded? This article contends that existing classifications of zones of peace are not adequate to explain this unusual coexistence. Thus, its main purpose is to develop a new analytical category of regional peace for assessing this phenomenon: the hybrid peace. It aims to research the evolution of security systems in South America during the previous century and build a new, threefold classification of peace zones: negative peace zones, hybrid peace zones, and positive peace zones

Regime Type and Bilateral Treaty Formalization

How does domestic regime type affect bilateral cooperation, and one of its most visible manifestations, bilateral treaties? This article explains how domestic political regime affects bilateral cooperation and, contrary to the expectations of some scholars, why autocracies should be expected to be more likely than democracies to enter into bilateral treaties. If the preferences of a pair of states are not identical, the sets of agreements that each party would consent to (win-sets) need to overlap for a bilateral treaty to be acceptable. Because additional domestic constraints reduce the size of a country’s win-set, autocracies should have broader win-sets than democracies. Therefore, autocratic dyads should be more likely to formalize bilateral treaties than other pairs of states. Based on an original data set, I present empirical evidence showing that pairs of autocracies are more likely than other pairs of states to enter into agreements formalizing bilateral cooperation