Affiliation:
1. University of Notre Dame, USA
2. Florida State University, USA and Air Force Institute of Technology
3. Florida State University, USA
Abstract
A number of studies find that democracies spend less on their military than non-democracies. Yet there are well known counter-examples, including but not limited to the United States and Israel. We contend that these counter-examples are part of a larger pattern. The relationship between regime type and military spending is conditional on external threat. Among countries that do not perceive a significant external threat to their interests, democracies allocate considerably less to the military than non-democracies. However, democracies with a significant external threat do not allocate less to the military than non-democracies. The reason prior research consistently finds that democracies, on average, spend less on the military, even while controlling for external threat, is that democracies are much less likely to have a high external threat. For example, autocracies are nearly twice as likely as democracies to have a significant external threat in our sample. An empirical analysis of military spending from 1952–2000 is consistent with these expectations.
Subject
Political Science and International Relations,Public Administration,Sociology and Political Science
Cited by
3 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献