A revolution of democratic warfare? Assessing regime type and capability-based explanations of military transformation processes

Abstract

Armament policies are determined by domestic rather than international politics according to liberal IR perspectives. More specifically, military transformation processes in democratic countries are understood as being informed by the political need to limit the number of casualties during military operations. Consequently, liberal scholars assume a distinct democratic eagerness to resort to precision-guided munitions, drones, or even cyber attacks. Our analysis challenges this explanation of democratic armament policies. We evaluate the timing and programmatic choices of armament policies of 33 countries, democratic and non-democratic, combining different indicators of information technology procurement and usage by national militaries. Based on this data, countries are categorized into Revolution in Military Affairs leaders, uppers, followers, stragglers, entrants, and non-participants. Finally, we test the explanatory power of two competing independent variables, representing casualty shyness versus capability-based explanations of military transformation processes. Our results show that realist assumptions yield strong correlations, while liberal assumptions do not produce statistically significant results.