DOMMEM MAIZELS Military Burden Developing Countries

The Military Burden in Developing Countries
Author(s): Edward Dommen and Alfred Maizels

Source: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 377-401
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/160890 .
Accessed: 08/05/2014 15:14
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Journal of Modern African Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
TheJournalof ModernAfricanStudies,26, 3 (1988), pp. 377-401
The Military Burden

in Developing Countries
by EDWARD DOMMEN AND ALFRED MAIZELS*
DURING THE I970os, African arms imports rose faster than in any other
region of the world. Indeed, military spending doubled between 1970
and I977, albeit falling since that peak by about one-quarter by
I982,1 as may be seen in Figure i. The expansion by developing
countries of their armed forces during the I970s, which was certainly
not confined to Africa, stimulated interest among economists regarding
its impact on economic growth. Our article attempts a quantitative
assessment of some of the more important factors which influence levels
of military expenditures in developing countries, first in general and
then in Africa specifically, by means of cross-country multiple regres-
sion analysis for the average of the years 1978-80. Although military
spending is often an end in itself, providing a living for the soldiers and
their suppliers, it is also justified on the grounds that it deters armed
conflict or domestic unrest, despite being responsible for so many coups
d'etat.
IMPACT OF MILITARY EXPENDITURES ON ECONOMIC GROWTH:
A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE DEBATE
The controversy on this issue was provoked by a study of the

relationship between defence spending and G.D.P. growth in 44
developing countries from I950 to 1965. Emile Benoit found that
during this period higher defence burdens (defined as military expen-
diture as a percentage of civilian G.D.P.) were positively associated
with higher growth rates, and apparently reflecting to some extent the
influence of bilateral economic aid.2 It would seem from his regression
results, as Nicole Ball maintained, that higher growth rates may be
attributed in some degree to higher levels of bilateral aid, but not of
* Edward Dommen is Senior Economic Affairs
Officer, United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development, Geneva, and Alfred Maizels is a Senior Fellow at the World Institute for
Development Economics Research, Helsinki.
1 Robin Luckham, 'Militarization in Africa', in Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute, SIPRI Yearbook,i985 (London and Philadelphia, 1985).
z Emile Benoit, Defence and Economic Growth in Developing Countries (Boston, 1973).
15-2

378 EDWARD DOMMEN AND ALFRED MAIZELS
FIGURE I
Trends in Military Expenditures by African States, I970-82'
1U,UUU
98,000
,00 Sub-SaharanAfrica
0)
00
7,000
/
6,000 - Noth Afrc a
6,000
8
a
5,000
00
4,000
'4 3,000--
sE
2,000
1.000
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982
military expenditures.2 However, Benoit preferred to argue that the

latter could have both positive and negative effects on economic
growth, and later claimed that his analysis did suggest that, on balance,
military expenditures encouraged economic growth in developing
countries.3
The principal negative effect of using additional resources for
military purposes (ignoring external aid) would seem to be that
necessarily less is available for investment and production in the nation
as a whole. This effect, where significant, would tend to be particularly
important if military expenditure has a high import content, thus
reducing the share of capital goods and intermediate products required
for civilian investment. Assuming that the armed forces are relatively
unproductive - in the sense of contributing to capital formation, or in
more general terms, to increasing the capacity to produce - then a shift
1 Source: SIPRI Yearbook,1985, table 9'I. North Africa includes Algeria, Egypt, Libya,
Morocco, and Tunisia; sub-Saharan Africa includes all other African countries, including South
Africa.
2 Nicole Ball, 'Defence and Development: a critique of the Benoit study', in Economic
Developmentand CulturalChange(Chicago), 31, 3, 1983, pp. 507-24.
3 Emile Benoit, 'Growth and Defence in Developing Countries', in ibid. 26, 2, 1978, pp.
27 -80.

THE MILITARY BURDEN 379
of resources in their direction will result, other things being equal, in a
negative impact on economic growth. However, Benoit distinguished a
number of possible offsetting effects, each of which would tend to
enhance the potential for growth. These include, in particular, the
imparting of technical skills in military training, which may help to
turn discharged personnel into more productive civilian workers; the
construction of basic infrastructure, such as roads, which are likely to
yield external economies of advantage to civilian production; and the
adoption of more expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, which
may promote greater utilisation of available resources.
Benoit's argument has been sharply criticised in recent years, not
least by those who continue to throw doubt on the existence of positive
'spin-off' effects of military expenditure. Saadet Deger has shown that
for 50 developing countries from 1965 to 1973 there was a statistically
significant negative relationship between the percentage of the G.N.P.
spent on the military as against that on public education, allowing for
other variables likely to influence both1 - in other words, that increases
in defence burdens were associated with reductions in the relative
share of the national product devoted to the formation of skills and,
presumably, to human capital in the wider sense. Likewise, as regards
the mobilisation of domestic resources, Deger found after allowing for
the direct effects of increases in military spending on, for example,
inflation, foreign capital inflows, and the level of taxation, that the
propensity to save was reduced.2
Oumar Nabe computed a rather general index of development for 26
African countries for each year from 1967 to i9763 - based, interalia, on
the number of school teachers and physicians per I,ooo population, as
well as government spending on education and medical services as a
percentage of G.N.P. - and his analysis showed that military expen-
diture was negatively linked to both social as well as economic develop-
ment. Ball made the more fundamental point that conventional
governmental planning during the period covered by Benoit's study
aimed to attract foreign aid and investment in order to increase G.N.P.
primarily by creating export-oriented industries. However, this strategy
led in practice to the concentration of resources on the social elites, and
1 Saadat Deger, 'Human Resources, Government Education Expenditure and the Military
Burden in Less Developed Countries', Birkbeck College, London, I981, Discussion Paper No.
109.
2 Saadat
Deger, 'Does Defence Expenditure Mobilise Resources in LDCs?', Annual Con-
ference of Development Studies Association, Dublin, 1982.
3 Oumar Nabe, 'Military Expenditures and Industrialization in Africa', in Journalof Economic
Issues(Lincoln, Nebraska), xvII, 2, 1983, pp. 575-87.

EDWARD DOMMEN AND ALFRED MAIZELS
380
to the impoverishment of large numbers of people. This inequitable
development, she argues, has been imposed on third-world populations
by the use of military force.1
In some ways the most important attack on Benoit has come from
authors who have criticised him for having used a simplistic single-
equation regression approach when what is required is an explicit
theoretical model to ensure that the interrelations among the relevant
variables are properly taken into account. Scholars using this more
complex approach include Ronald Smith, Deger, Somnath Sen,
Riccardo Faini, Patricia Annez, Lance Taylor, and David Lim, and
without exception their studies show that the share of military
expenditure in G.D.P. is negatively associated with the latter's growth
rate.2 The results relating specifically to Africa are summarised in
Table i.
There seems little doubt that, taken together, these studies negate the
Benoit thesis, and that, for probably the majority of the developing
TABLE I
Regression Coefficients for Effect of Military Expenditure (M.E.)

on G.D.P. Growth Rates in Africa1
Deger and Smith, loc. cit." 1965-73 M.E. as % -0-9 to -0-39, not significantly
of G.D.P. different from zero
Lim, loc. cit. I965-73 M.E. as % -o-io, not significantly different
of G.D.P. from zero
Faini, Annez, and Taylor, loc. 1952-70 Change in -0-04, significant at the I0%
cit. M.E. as % level
of G.D.P.
Maizels and Nissanke, loc. cit." 1973-80 M.E. as % -O-14, significant at the I5%
of G.D.P. level
a Coefficients include indirect effects calculated from 2- or 3-stage models.
1 Ball, 'Defence and Development'.

2 See Ronald Smith, 'Military Expenditure and Capitalism', in CambridgeJournal of Economics,
1, I, 1977, pp. 61-76, and Military Expenditure and Investment in OECD Countries, 1954-1973,
in Journal of ComparativeEconomics (New York), iv, I, I 980, pp. 19-32; Deger, 'Human Resources,
Government Education Expenditure and the Military Burden' and 'Does Defence Expenditure
Mobilise Resources in LDCs?'; Saadat Deger and Somnath Sen, 'Military Expenditure, Spin-off
and Economic Development', in Journal of Development Economics (Amsterdam), 13, 1983, pp.
67-84; Saadat Deger and Ron Smith, 'Military Expenditure and Growth in Less Developed
Countries', in Journal of ConflictResolution (Beverly Hills), II, 2, 1983, pp. 335-54; Riccardo Faini,
Patricia Annez, and Lance Taylor, 'Defence Spending, Economic Structure and Growth:
evidence among countries over time', in Economic Developmentand Cultural Change, 32, 3, I984, pp.
487-98; and David Lim, 'Another Look at Growth and Defence in Less Developed Countries',
in ibid. 31, 2, 1983, pp. 377-84-
3 Source: Alfred Maizels and M. K. Nissanke, 'The Determinants of Military Expenditures in
Developing Countries', in World Development (Oxford), 14, 1986, pp. I 125-40.

THE MILITARY BURDEN 38i
countries, policy choices involving military versuscivilian expenditures
are essentially zero- (or even negative) sum games in terms of overall
growth. The drastic deterioration in the economic position of African
states since I980 has made such policy choices even more crucial to
the development process. It is indeed ironic that at a time when the
maximum mobilisation of domestic resources for recovery is needed,
internal unrest in many countries (sometimes precipitated by I.M.F.
conditionality) is resulting in even larger budgetary allocations for the
armed forces.
This brings us to the following question: If such expenditures are
demonstrably detrimental to economic growth, why do developing
countries spend such relatively high proportions of their limited
national resources for military purposes?1
INFLUENCES ON MILITARY EXPENDITURE AND

CONFLICT: SOME HYPOTHESES
Neo-classical economic theory assumes that the state is politically

neutral, and that its view of the need for 'security' is based on serving
the interests of the entire society. However, in developing countries this
typically involves the repression of domestic opposition groups, as well
as protection against possible external aggression. In particular, where
the armed forces have themselves taken power, it can hardly be
assumed that the state is neutral. As many as 28 of the 52 African states
were classified by R. L. Sivard as being under military control in
I985.2
Since the state apparatus is typically in the hands of a dominant
social group, a more satisfactory approach to analysing the factors
influencing the level of military spending in Africa must be related, at
least in part, to the need for the armed forces to maintain ruling elites
in power. And, of course, the nature of the regime itself is also likely to
be significant: other things being equal, a dictatorship can be expected
to maintain a larger military establishment than would a democracy.
Even in a country with elected civilian leaders, the more powerful the
1 A clear statement of the traditional answers to this question can be found in A. Bolaji
Akinyemi et al., 'Disarmament and Development: utilization of resources for military purposes
in black Africa', Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, 1979, preparedsfor the United
Nations.
2 R. L. Sivard, World
Military and Social Expenditures, i985 (Washington, D.C., 1985), p. 24.
According to SIPRI Yearbook,1985, ch. 9, 23 regimes were of military origin, with a further three
being impossible to identify as either military or civilian.

military the greater the chances that it can increase its share of the
government budget.
There are also a number of economic influences at the national level
to be considered. First, in so far as more and more developments imply
structural changes in society - including more urbanisation and greater
inequalities in wealth, income, and opportunities for advancement-
they may involve greater potential for conflict among social and other
groups. The growth of real income is also relevant, since in its absence
the resource constraints are likely to place a limit on increased spending
on the armed forces in the absence of foreign military or financial aid.
In addition, the size of the government budget in relation to the gross
domestic product is also important, because where this is relatively
large, so is the proportion available for the military. At the same time,
as greater control is gained by the central authorities over the disposal
of the national product, the percentage devoted to the armed forces
may tend to decline.
A further factor, frequently mentioned in the literature, concerns
the persuasive powers exerted on a regime's decision-makers by a
domestic arms industry in close alliance with political and bureaucratic
interests. However, the influence of the 'military-industrial complex',
though possibly of importance in a few developing countries, is
generally much smaller than it is in the larger industrialised nations.
The arms industry is more or less negligible in Africa, apart from South
Africa and Egypt. S.I.P.R.I. indicates that arms production is 'limited'
in Nigeria and 'marginal' in Zimbabwe and Algeria, and estimates
that only the latter has the industrial and manpower base necessary to
manufacture weapons on a larger scale.1
At the regional level, the principal influence has been, and remains,
disagreements, tensions, and wars between neighbours. In Africa,
many armed conflicts shade into one another, and the number can
only be counted by resorting to artificial and debatable distinctions.
However, between 1970 and I986 as many as 32 countries in the
continent were involved in armed conflicts of one size or another in
which their neighbours were implicated.
It could be argued that the amount of money spent on the armed
forces is also likely to be influenced by whether or not a country is a
member of a regional political or military alliance, but in Africa it is
difficult to single this factor out from others. Various collaborative
arrangements, not to mention acts of union, link or have linked African
1 SIPRI Yearbook, 1985, table 10.4.

states on the Mediterranean coast, but their effects are overlaid by
other factors. The six 'Frontline states' in Southern Africa work
together closely in matters of defence, but it would be stretching a point
to claim that their 'alliance' is decisive in determining the level of
military expenditure as distinct from the threat South Africa presents
to each of them separately, apart from their own domestic conflicts.
The 17 members of the Economic Community of West African States
(Ecowas) have been linked by a mutual defence and non-aggression
agreement since I98I, but thereafter the army's share of the gross
domestic product rose in only two of the eight for which information is
available.'
At the global level, it is difficult to judge a priori the influence, if any,
of transnational corporations on military expenditures in developing
countries. To the extent that their operations lead to national dis-
integration, as some dependency theorists maintain,2 the resultant
increase in social divisiveness and conflict could be expected to lead to
greater internal repression of disadvantaged groups and, to that extent,
to more money being spent on the armed forces. On the other hand,
transnationals are likely to concentrate their activities, other things
being equal, in countries with low levels of political instability,3 and so
to that extent there is likely to be a negative relationship between the
magnitude of foreign direct investment and military expenditure.
A further element which may also have become of increasing sig-
nificance in recent years as an influence on the military requirements
of developing countries is their degree of involvement with either of the
superpowers. To the extent that any third-world regime adheres to a
global political/strategic alliance, provides facilities for a foreign base,
and depends on the United States or the Soviet Union for equipment
and personnel training, it may also come under pressure to expand its
own military establishment, especially where contending forces in a
regional conflict are each supported by arms and finance from a
different power-bloc.
As regards aid flows it is equally difficult to prejudge the probable
influence, if any, that a major donor will have on the financial decisions
being taken by a developing country about its own armed forces.
However, the presumption would be that a heavy dependence on
1 SIPRI Yearbook, i985, table 7A5.
2 Osvaldo Sunkel, 'Transnational Capitalism and National Disintegration in Latin America',
in Social and Economic Studies (Kingston, Jamaica), 22, 1973, pp. 132-76; and Gabriel Palma,
'Dependency: a formal theory of underdevelopment or a methodology for the analysis of concrete
situations of underdevelopment?', in World Development, 6, 1978, pp. 881-924.
3 Isaiah Frank, Foreign Enterprise in
Developing Countries (Baltimore, 1980).

TABLE 2
Potential Influences on the Level of Military Expenditures
in Developing Countries
National Regional Global
I. Political Nature of the state Regional alliance Adherence to a global

framework power-bloc
II. Military Vested interests of Regional war or Foreign military aid
activity the military inter-state hostility
Internal repression
Civil war
III. Economic Level of economic Regional economic Growth of foreign-
linkages development grouping exchange availability
Real income growth Influence of foreign
capital
Size of state budget Influence of major aid
donor
Influence of military-
industrial complex
either of the superpowers for both aid and arms may tend to be
associated with higher spending on the military than if these supplies
were obtained from a variety of sources.
A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FACTORS INFLUENCING

MILITARY EXPENDITURES
The distinction between domestic, regional, and global levels pro-

vides a useful framework for a classification of the various potential
influences on the level of military spending in developing countries, as
shown in Table 2, and an attempt has been made to assess their
significance by cross-country regressions both for 72 in the Third
World, and separately for 38 in Africa. The annex to our article gives
the sources of the data for the annual averages of the variables that
have been chosen for the period 1978-80. For Africa, these were
the years immediately following the peak in recorded military
expenditures; and for sub-Saharan Africa, it was the end of a plateau
before their marked decline in the early I980S.
i. Methodology
National and regional levels. Since the nature of the state, political
instability, internal repression, and the vested interests of the military

are closely interconnected, it was decided to represent these concepts by
a single variable. For this purpose, countries with civilian governments
were given a zero score, while those under military control were scored
i, 2, or 3, according to whether their use of violence against the public
was rated as 'none', 'some', or 'frequent', respectively.1 Of the 72 in
the full sample, nearly two-thirds had governments under military
control, including two-fifths in which 'official use of violence against
the public' was frequent.2 Half the African sample was under military
control (i9 countries), and of these 11 were classified as frequently
indulging in 'violence against the public'. A 'dummy variable' was
used in order to allow for situations in which countries were involved
in either a regional and/or a civil war in the period 1973 to I980.
The level of economic development was represented by G.D.P. per
capita (measured in U.S. dollars, log-transformed), admittedly a crude
and imperfect measure, albeit adequate as a control variable. Real
income growth was represented by the annual average percentage
growth in real G.D.P. over the period 1973 to I980, while the size of
the state budget was represented by the average share of central
government expenditure in G.D.P. for the years 1978 to I980. Total
population (not listed in Table 2) was included as an additional control
variable.
Global level. The availability of foreign exchange was represented
by the growth of exports of goods and services, aid, and the net
inflow of long-term capital (deflated by the import price index, log-
transformed), during the years 1972-3 to 1979-80. A separate variable
for the change over this period in the ratio of aid receipts to G.D.P. was
also included.
The potential influence of foreign capital in a developing country
was measured in several complementary ways. First, estimates were
made of the proportion of the total stock of fixed assets (excluding the
government sector and housing) which was under foreign control. As
indicated earlier, different views of the role of external capital would
lead to opposing expectations of the relationship between the degree of
foreign penetration and the size of the armed forces, and hence of the
military burden. Second, measurements were made of the changes that
1 Based on R. L.
Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures, i983 (Washington, D.C., I983).
This source gives information on the 'official use of violence against the public' only for military
regimes. Sivard, op. cit. 1985, gives this information for both military and other regimes, but 1985
is too remote from the period 1978-80 for this more complete information to be used in our
regressions. For instance, the number of countries in our African sample of 38, which Sivard
classifies as being under military rule, rose from 19 in 1983 to 23 in I985.
2
Sivard, op. cit. 1983, p. I I.

386
had taken place in the stock of foreign capital from 1973 to I980, in
order to ascertain whether or not they affected the relative magnitude
of the host country's military efforts. Third, in order to test the
hypothesis that developing countries in which foreign capital invest-
ment comes mainly from a single dominant source are particularly
susceptible to the latter's influence on both their socio-economic and
military policies, the degree of concentration was represented by a 5-
point score, depending on the extent of which the subsidiary and
affiliated enterprises of the transnational corporations were all located
in one developed country.
Finally, the influence of adherence to a global power-bloc, and of
foreign military aid, was represented by a single variable, viz. a 5-point
score whereby countries wholly or mainly dependent on one external
supplier of arms, for example, were given code 4, while those with
widely diversified sources were given code o. High concentration of
arms transfers appears to be significantly related to adherence to one of
the global power-blocs, and is also positively associated with levels
of military aid.
Estimates of military expenditures.These should be treated with great
caution in many developing countries, where published data can be
deficient to a greater or lesser extent. In some cases, underestimates are
designed to mislead potential enemies but, more generally, govern-
ments may wish to minimise the apparent military burdens on their
economies.
There is a formidable array of obstacles to be faced by those who
wish to obtain reliable internationally comparable data on military
spending. Definitions may differ, but even where these coincide,
published information may be misleading. Ball describes five of the
mechanisms most frequently used to obscure the correct facts and
figures:1
(i) doublebook-keeping:the published accounts differ from the figures
produced for internal, governmental use;
(ii) extra-budgetaryaccounts:military spending can be financed from
sources other than the budget;
(iii) highly aggregatedbudgetcategories:these can range from a single
figure for expenditure on the armed forces to the inclusion of what has
been spent in categories which might be thought to be civilian in
nature;
1 Nicole Ball, 'Measuring Third World Security Expenditure: a research note', in World
Development, 12, 2, I984, pp. I57-I64.

(iv) military assistance: this may be hidden by donors under anodyne
budget headings, while recipients may dispense with recording military
grants or include the repayments of military loans with the rest of their
debt-service figures; and
(v) foreign-exchangemanipulation:governments, especially if they con-
trol marketing boards or nationalised industries, may fail to record
some exports and use the corresponding foreign exchange to pay for
secret military imports.
It should be noted that none of the 22 conflicts recorded in Africa for
the period 1978-80 concerned only the armed forces of states, since
other belligerents were involved in every case. However, there are no
reliable estimates available of the expenditures incurred by unofficial
armed movements, although some do use expensive and sophisticated
weapons. The members of guerrilla forces may or may not receive less
pay than their opponents in national armies or inflict more exactions
on the local inhabitants; but certainly any goods taken from the latter
for the upkeep of groups of soldiers are akin to a tax levied on the
civilian population for the direct benefit of the armed forces. In short,
military expenditures are often underestimated, with an additional
systematic bias dbwnwards wherever guerrilla movements operate.
There are also countries in Africa that harbour unofficial armed
movements which are actually fighting on the territory of one or more
neighbours. The financing of these groups has an economic impact on
the country in which they have a base; this can, however, be positive,
especially in so far as the needed funds come from elsewhere. It should
be noted in passing that under the U.N.-approved system of national
accounts, 'members of the armed forces of a foreign country who are
stationed in... [another] country' are not regarded as 'resident
individuals' of the latter,1 which corresponds to actual practice.
Since there is no reason to assume that different governments
understate what they spend on their armed forces by a similar
proportion, there are inevitable, possibly large, margins of error in any
comparative analysis. In addition, the figures for many countries can
be substantially different in the two main international sources of
statistical information. The analysis in our article relies on data from
the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in Washington, but
additional regressions for the full sample based on the publications of
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute were also
computed, and yielded broadly similar results. None the less, these
1 United Nations, A System of National Accounts (New York, 1968), para. 5. I 17e.

should not be taken as a definitive demonstration of the influence of

particular factors on military spending, but rather as suggestive, albeit
in a number of cases strongly so.
2. The RegressionResults
The military expenditure of each developing country has been
measured in two ways: first, as the proportion of the G.D.P. (to
indicate the diversion of national resources to the armed forces); and
second, as the share of the total budget of the central government (to
indicate the results of resource-allocation decisions). Table 3 sets out
the results of separate regressions for each of these definitions of the
military burden taken as the dependent variable, both for the full
sample of all 72 developing countries, and separately for the 38 in
Africa.
(i) The full sample

For the share of military spending in G.D.P., the regression equation
for the full sample accounted for about two-thirds of the variance, with
all the different dimensions (military/economic/political) and levels
(national/regional/global) making significant contributions to the
explanation. A comparison of t-values indicates that differences in the
share of the government budget in G.D.P. represented the most
important single factor associated with differences in the ratio of
military expenditure to G.D.P. - differences of io per cent in the
former tend to be associated with differences of some 2 per cent in the
latter. It is of some interest to note that income levels per capita showed
no significant relationship to military expenditure/G.D.P. ratios.
The existence of war had a marked effect on the size of the defence
burden, as expected. Countries in such a situation tend to have higher
military spending ratios as regards both their G.D.P. (some I'5-2-5
percentage points) and their central government budgets (some 6'5-7'5
percentage points) than have other developing countries. The mag-
nitude of these differences can be gauged from the fact that the
corresponding mean proportions for all developing countries were 3-9
and I 37 per cent, respectively.
The control of government by the military, and particularly where
the latter's rule is associated with frequent violence against the public,
seems to lead almost inevitably to increases in the size and cost of the
army. The regressions yield closely similar, and highly significant,

3 TABLE
Regression Coefficients for Military Expenditure Ratios

in Developing Countries1
Whole Sample African Sample
Ratio to Gross Ratio to Central Ratio to Ratio to

Explanatory Variables Domestic Product Government Exp. G.D.P. C.G.E.
(I) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

I. Military Activity
Inter-state or civil war 2-43** I-74* 7-68** 6.44** I.45 I3'62
(2-89) (2-00) (3-40) (2-57) (r'I3) (3-84)
Military government/ o-65** 0o-66** 1-33* 1-47* 0o99** n.s.
use of violence (2-63) (2-76) (2-16) (2-24) (3-26)
2. Internal Economic
Linkages
Total population n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s. o80o* I'34
(2-45) (I-36)
C.G.E. as ratio of 0-2I** 0-I7** 0- 22**
G.D.P. (7 10) (5-63) (5-45)
3. External Economic
Linkages
Growth of foreign- 2.79** 2-40** 473** 4-'3I t n.s. n.s.
exchange availability (4'o6) (3-49) (2-44) (197)
Foreign direct
investment:
Ratio to total --II5** _-079* -2-59** - I'54 n.s. n.s.
capital stock (- 3'59) (- 2-27) - 2-27) (- 147)
Foreign investor n.s. n.s. - I'38 -I.I5 n.s. n.s.
concentration (- 1-46) (-r I4)
Change in ratio of n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s. 1-85
aid to G.D.P. (I 09)
4. External Political/
Strategic Alliances
*
Arms-supplier 0o63** 0-64** 2.45* 2.23** I-78
concentration (2-82) (2-96) (4-I2) (3-52) (2-64)
5. Regional Factors
Middle East -
3-33* 5'9I
(2-34) (I-49)
D-W 199 i-88 I-8o0 87 1-64 I-5

R2 0-651 0-673 0'5I7 051I5 0-47I 0-3
n 199 ir88 I-8o0 87 1I64 1-5
Note: Figures in brackets are t-values. ** Denotes significance at the I % level, * at the 5%
level, and t at the I0% level; n.s. denotes not statistically significant. Columns (i) and (3) differ
from (2) and (4) in that they do not single out the special r6le of the Middle East.
1 Source: Maizels and Nissanke, loc. cit. tables 3, 4, and

5.

FIGURE 2
Military Spending, Coupsd'Etat, and Armed Conflict in Africa, 1978-80
Key: 1978-1980
* coups d'etat
occurrenceof armed
* conflict: statesnamed
militaryspendingas percentageof
centralgovernmentexpenditures:
E Oto 0.9
- lto9.9
m 10to 14.9
Eii 15 to 19.9
[ 20 or more
W informationnot available
PeterProjection
coefficients for this variable, indicating that, on average, such regimes

spend about 2 per cent more of their gross domestic product on their
own armed forces than do their civilian counterparts. For the military
component of the central government budget, the difference between
these two types of regime is of the order of 4-4 5 per cent.

THE MILITARY BURDEN 39I
Turning now to the external economic variables, it seems evident
that the availability of foreign exchange acts as an important con-
straint, as expected, on the ability to finance expansions of the armed
forces. Foreign capital penetration, however, is negatively related to
the military burden, which supports the hypothesis that transnationals
prefer to invest in countries with relatively low levels of political
instability (and of military expenditure). Though this result does not
necessarily invalidate the 'dependency school' argument, mentioned
earlier, in regard to particular national situations, it would seem that
the opposite view is more generally applicable.
Finally, the variable used to represent adherence to a global
political/strategic alliance was found to be highly significant. The
military expenditures of countries wholly or mainly dependent on one
external supplier of arms and equipment were, on average, some 2 per
cent higher as a proportion of their G.D.P., totalling as much as 6-7-5
per cent more of their central government budgets than those with
widely diversified sources of supply. These differences strongly suggest
that adherence to a global power-bloc is indeed likely, as indicated
earlier, to lead to pressures on regimes to spend more on their armed
forces.
(ii) The African sample

As regards the proportion of the gross national product that is spent
on the armed forces, the regression for the African sample also showed
the government budget/G.D.P. ratio as the single most important
variable, followed by that for military government/use of violence, the
latter coefficient being 50 per cent higher than for the full sample.
Another result of some interest (not shown in Table 3) is that when the
government budget/G.D.P. ratio is excluded from the regression, the
change in the aid/G.D.P. ratio becomes statistically significant ( =
2-50), implying some 'leakage' of economic aid to the armed forces.
Turning to the military share of the central government budget, the
existence or otherwise of war was the dominant factor explaining
inter-country variations, though the degree of concentration of arms
suppliers also appears to be a significant influence.
(iii) Military spendingand economicgrowth

It should be possible, in principle, to integrate the results of the
analysis of the determinants of military expenditure with those relating

to the latter's impact on the rate of economic growth, as already

summarised. For example, what have been the economic costs, in terms
of lost output, of having a military rather than a civilian regime? and/
or of adherence to a global power-bloc?
The mean effect of either of these two situations has been shown
above to have been in the region of an increase of 2 percentage points
in the military's share of G.D.P. But this result needs to be combined
with a coefficient for the effect of changes in the latter on the rate of
economic growth. Taking the coefficient for Africa derived by Maizels
and Nissanke, as shown in Table i, it can be estimated, for example,
that countries with military governments using violence frequently in
the period 1978 to I980 had, on average, a G.D.P. growth rate that was
some 0-4 percentage points lower than they would have had with
civilian governments. This calculation should not, of course, be taken
as a realistic estimate of the likely result of a transition from one type
of regime to another. It is, rather, illustrative of one aspect of the issues
under discussion and a pointer to the need for further research.
THE MILITARY IN ACTION: FACTORS INFLUENCING
ARMED CONFLICT AND COUPS D ETAT
The data used in this section relate, once again, to the period
I978-80 and the same 38 African countries. They were, in fact, all
those for which certain key indicators (like military government/use of
violence) were available. Unfortunately, the countries left out are not
randomly distributed, as may be seen from Figure I. Although the
omission of Egypt can be justified on the grounds that with respect to
military policy it is more part of the Middle East, it is certainly a pity
that South Africa/Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe are
excluded - although the latter, admittedly, did not become indepen-
dent until 1980, the end of the period selected for this study - and
that only one of the five small islands of the region could be
included.
Armed conflicts come in all shapes and sizes, and it is difficult to fit
them into neat categories because of the complexity of events. Some
authorities, like Sivard, use a quantified concept of war: quarrels
involving at least I,000 deaths.1 But this criterion has drawbacks
because it biases the list against armed conflicts in small countries. It
would not be sensible, for instance, to ignore the invasion of the
1 Lewis Fry Richardson introduced this method, but his threshold was 315 deaths; Statistics of
Deadly Quarrels (Pittsburgh, I960), ch. In.

Comoros in 1978, even though the number of troops and casualties was
small. Difficult decisions must also be taken about how to aggregate or
distinguish conflicts. Sivard, for instance, treats the fighting in Angola
prior to independence as one war, and thereafter as another. It could
equally well be considered either as one war which has continued up to
the present or, since a variety of fractions are involved, as several
simultaneous armed conflicts. To decide how many wars there have
been in Chad in the last ten years would be an engrossing but fruitless
exercise even for the cognoscenti.
In our present analysis, any report of an armed conflict of any kind
(including civil or tribal) in the annually published Facts on File (New
York and Oxford) for the years 1978 to I980 led to the country or
countries concerned being assigned a 'dummy value' of one, which
remained unchanged regardless of the number of times it was later
mentioned. In other words, this figure just records the existence of an
armed conflict, but makes no attempt to assess the number or duration
of the engagements. Likewise, raids and other kinds of interventions by
foreign troops, mercenaries, or armed groups, resulted in a 'dummy
value' of one being assigned both to the countries invaded and to those
that sent the soldiers. However, official peace-keeping forces under the
auspices of multilateral organisations (notably the O.A.U. or the U.N.)
were excluded. If no armed conflict took place in the territory of a state
being used unofficially by armed forces fighting elsewhere, a 'dummy
value' of zero was assigned. In addition, we have also counted any
successful coup d'etat reported in Facts on File, and since each was a
distinct event, the actual number is used in our statistical analysis,
namely 13, of which three were in Mauritania.
Figure 2 also summarises the information on armed conflicts and
coups d'etat during the period I978-80, compiled according to the
criteria described above, and Table 4 gives the results of the multiple
regressions that were run, involving military spending as a percentage
of central government expenditure, G.D.P. per capita ( 1979), growth in
G.D.P. (I979-80), the indicator of military government/use of violence
described earlier, the number of successful coups d'etat, and 'dummy
values' for the occurrence of armed conflicts and landlocked status.
i. Armed Conflicts
Armed conflicts were taken as the dependent variable in one regres-
sion, and unsurprisingly are very highly correlated with the share
of military spending in central government expenditure, as well as

TABLE 4
Armed Conflicts and Coupsd'Etat in Africa:
Regression Results, 1978-80
Armed G.D.P.
Independent Variables Conflicts Coups d'Etat Growth
Military as percentage of central 0-05** 0o02 0-30*

government expenditure (5'33) (II3) (2 48)
G.D.P. per capita (1979) -0o0 -0oo n.s.
(-126) (-142)
Growth in G.D.P. -004* -004 -_
(- 255) (-I'54)
Military of violence n.s. 1 I
government/use -1-47*
(I .o8) (-2 39)
Coups d'etat n.s. n.s.
Armed conflicts -- -026 -I 42*
(-0o89) (2-55)
Landlocked status n.s. -0o05 n.s.
(-02 I)
R2 ?'543 0-266 0'351

D-W I 55 2-4I 138
n 38 38 38
Note: Figures in brackets are t-values. ** Denotes significance at the I % level, and * at the
5% level; n.s. denotes not statistically significant.
being associated with lower growth in G.D.P. The multiple regression

in which the latter was taken as the dependent variable yields a similar
negative relationship, also significant at the 2 per cent level.
It could be argued from these results either that armed conflicts slow
economic growth or that the frustrations of sluggish growth help to
create violence. However, the growth rate of G.D.P. is not significantly
related to the incidence of coupsd'etat; moreover, the multiple regression
with armed conflicts as the dependent variable does not yield a
statistically significant coefficient for G.D.P. per capita. These two
findings tend to support the hypothesis that armed conflicts in Africa
have a negative effect on economic growth, and that violence is not
necessarily the outcome of a low or negative rate of growth. Thus, while
armed conflicts may have some incidental positive effects on growth by
increasing the military budget, as well as by the amount of money
being spent on repairs and reconstruction, such effects are more than
offset by the adverse results of domestic disruptions, including the
destruction of productive capital, economic infrastructure, and 'goods
in process', such as growing crops.

2. Coups d'Etat
An interesting statistical analysis has been presented by Thomas
Johnson, Robert Slater, and Pat McGowan of 52 successful and 56
attempted coups d'etat and 102 plots in 45 sub-Saharan African states
between I960 and 1982. The explanatory factors they explore are more
political than economic, and their findings can be summarised as
follows: other factors being equal, (i) African states have experienced
more armed interventions in politics when their militaries are large and
ethnically homogeneous rather than small and culturally plural; (2)
where the militaries are relatively central in African states because of
their role in repression and their claims on state revenue, they
subsequently became involved in politics.1 This analysis refutes the
view that African coups d'etat are the result of unpredictable personal
and idiosyncratic features of individuals, as Samuel Decalo, in par-
ticular, has argued.2 African states that have either maintained or
restored some degree of party competition have considerably less
military involvement than more authoritarian regimes. In addition,
states whose inhabitants were still primarily in agriculture around
I960 have experienced less military involvement in politics, presumably
because early and rapid population growth in the capital city is
destabilising. With respect to economic factors, Johnson et al. find that
the growth of the industrial sector, the rate of growth of G.N.P., and
the ratio of exports/imports to G.N.P. are negatively related to military
intervention; in other words, that African states whose economies did
not perform well in the I96os and 1970s were prone to coups.
A more specifically sociological debate has been provoked by Samuel
Huntington's argument that objective civilian control is achieved by
making the military a tool of the state through formal professional
training based on a western democratic model.3 Following the line
taken by Ali Mazrui in I975,4 Agola Auma-Osolo maintains that such
military training and esprit de corps do not overcome either tribal
loyalties or the army's readiness to intervene at any time against those
that some of its leaders perceive to be wrong-doers.5 In any case, the
1 Thomas H. Johnson, Robert 0. Slater, and Pat McGowan, 'Explaining African Military
Coups d'Etat, I96o-I982', in The American Political Science Review (Washington, D.C.), 78, 3,
September 1984, pp. 622-40.
2 Samuel
Decalo, Coupsand Army Rule in Africa: studies in military style (New Haven and London,
I976).
3 Cf. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (New York, I964).
4 Ali A. Mazrui, 'The Resurrection of the Warrior Tradition in African Political Culture', in
The Journal of Modern African Studies, 13, i, March I975, pp. 67-84.
5 Agola Auma-Osolo, 'Objective African Military Control: a new paradigm in civil-military
relations', in Journal of Peace Research (Oslo), xvII, i, 1980, pp. 29-46.

396
African warrior tradition, as expounded by these two scholars, is not
limited to the army: it was a paramilitary force that intervened in the
political process in Lesotho in January I970, albeit on the instructions
of the Prime Minister, and it was a field force that backed the
attempted coup in The Gambia in July I981.
Our examination of coups d'etat has been limited by the scarcity of
reliable data on attempted interventions, and by the fact that only Io
successful coups occurred in the 38 countries of our sample during
1978-80, as opposed to the 52 in the 45 countries during the 22 years
covered by Johnson, Slater, and McGowan. In any event, no signifi-
cant relationship could be found between the occurrence of coupsd'etat
and the other variables used in our study.
If it is assumed that the larger the share of the national budget
enjoyed by the armed forces, the greater their importance, then they
might well try to increase their annual allocations. Hence we might
expect to find a positive relationship between the size of the military's
share of the central government budget and the occurrence of coups
d'etat. However, as may be seen in Table 4, although the sign of the
coefficient in our regression is correct, the relationship is not significant.
It might be reasonable to assume that a successful coup had been
preceded by a period of tension and instability; indeed, it might be
expected that this had been one of the factors inducing the armed
intervention. Either way, it would be no surprise if the government
overthrown by a coup had been trying to maintain itself in power by
resort to repressive means. Many African coups are in the nature of
palace revolutions, in which one armed faction replaces another. For
these reasons, a positive relationship might be expected between the
occurrence of coups and the degree of military government/use of
violence. In our regression, the sign is correct, but the relationship is
not significant. Another result of interest is that the coefficient relating
armed conflict to coupsd'etat is negative, although again the relationship
is not statistically significant.
It is plausible to argue that the higher the rate of economic growth,
the less the likelihood of violent changes of government, since an
increasing quantity of goods can be shared out among the population,
including the armed forces. The prospect of more prosperous to-
morrows can calm many a spirit. Conversely, sluggish growth can lead
to frustration and exacerbate conflicts over the share-out of the goods
available. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that the sign of the
coefficient relating coups d'etat to economic growth is negative, albeit
once more not statistically significant.

3. Growth of G.D.P.
The regression in which G.D.P. growth was taken as the dependent
variable yielded a significant negative relationship with armed con-
flicts, as mentioned earlier, as well as with military government/use of
violence, significant at the 2 per cent level. Higher growth is associated
with a lesser prevalence of military government/use of violence, a
conclusion which will gratify defenders of plural paths to development
and cause concern to those who maintained, especially in the ig960os,
that economic achievements require unity of purpose imposed, if
necessary, from above. A positive relationship was also found between
G.D.P. growth and military spending as a share of central government
expenditure, significant at the 2 per cent level.
Regressions were also run to see whether any relationship could be
discerned between changes in the rate of economic growth on the one
hand, and armed conflicts or coups d'e'tat, on the other. It might be
thought, for instance, that social tensions would be aggravated by a fall
in the rate of growth, and that the latter might be increased after a
coup, especially as those responsible so often argue that this is one of the
motives for their action.1 Theoretical arguments could be produced in
favour of the view that economic growth is likely to be advanced once
the burden of years of violence has been removed, although at least in
the short term it may continue to be retarded because of the continuing
effect of the destruction of so much infrastructure, not to mention
human resources.
For this purpose, changes in the rate of growth of G.D.P. for the 38
countries of the sample were computed for the three-year periods of
1975-7 and I981-3, as well as 1978-80, each being regressed against
armed conflict and coupsd'etat, respectively, and in no case was an even
remotely significant relationship found. On the other hand, during
I978-80, as may be seen from Table 4, a negative relationship was
found between armed conflicts and G.D.P. growth, significant at the 5
per cent level of confidence, and between coups d'etat and G.D.P.
growth with a t-value of - '54, which is roughly significant at the
io per cent level. This suggests that in so far as there is a relationship
between economic growth and armed conflicts or coupsd'etat, it is only
to be found in the short term.
1 Cf. A. H. M.
Kirk-Greene, 'Stay By YourRadios': documentation
for a study of military government
in tropical Africa (Leiden and Cambridge, 1981).

TABLE 5
Military Spending as a Share of Central Government Expenditure
in Africa, I978-80
Standard
n Mean deviation
Landlocked countries I3 12'99 7'02

Other African countries 25 I'234 9'17
Full African sample 38 12-56 8-40
SOME GEOGRAPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
i. LandlockedCountries
It has recently been argued that the very existence of a landlocked
country as an independent state rather than as an interior region of a
coastal state is itself remarkable. According to Francois Doumenge,
although such a political phenomenon is the outcome of a strong will
to independence relative to the territorial ambitions of its neighbours,
this does require a sufficient basis in inhabitants or space. To maintain
its independence, a small landlocked country must have a dense core of
population (for example, Lesotho), while a thinly populated one must
be vast enough to exhaust any expansionist thrust by its neighbours
and maintain a national identity (for example, the Sahelien states of
Niger, Chad, or Mali).l The inference is that it is almost normal for a
landlocked country to live in a state of tension with its neighbours. If
true, this would lead to heavy military expenditures which could be
burdensome for poor countries with a small budgetary capacity.
The Doumenge hypothesis was tested within the framework of the
present study for 13 of the 14 landlocked countries of Africa (Zimbabwe
not being included), but as Table 5 shows, no significant difference
was found in their share of military spending in central government
expenditure when compared with the other 25 countries in the full
African sample.
The argument would also lead one to expect a higher incidence of
armed conflict involving landlocked countries. However, the statistics
show that only 5 of the 14 in this category experienced armed conflicts
during the period I978-80, as against 15 of the other 37; in other words,
the former were, if anything, slightly less involved in such fighting than
1 Francois Doumenge, Enclavementet developpement(Paris, 1986).

the latter. However, the t-value for this pair of statistics is only 0-38, so
that this hypothesis (as well as its obverse) is negated.
There was clear foreign involvement in four of the five armed
conflicts experienced by landlocked African countries during the
period 1978-80 (Burundi being the exception). This could be taken as
support for the hypothesis that landlocked countries live under threats
from their neighbours, were it not that every other armed conflict in
Africa during I978-80 also involved more than one country. One or
more of the actual belligerents was often a movement, or even a group
of mercenaries, rather than a government, but the territory or nationals
of more than one country were involved in each conflict.
A 'dummy value' for landlocked countries was also used in the
regressions described earlier, but in no case was its contribution
significant. It may simply be noted that in the regression with armed
conflict as the dependent variable, the sign of the coefficient was
negative.
2. The NeighbourhoodFactor
It might be asked to what extent violence spread from one outbreak
to another, as when dominos fall one upon the other. During the period
1978-80, as many as 22 African countries were involved in armed
conflicts. Six others were not, either as regards themselves or their
neighbours: Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, The Gambia,
Ghana, and Togo.
There were two main zones of conflict on the continent during
I978-80. The first is often referred to as the Horn of Africa, but in
fact includes a complex of overlapping but largely distinct struggles
involving countries stretching from Libya to Tanzania, with the most
serious fighting taking place in Chad, Ethiopia, and Uganda. The
second is Southern Africa, where the Pretoria regime was directly
involved during these three years in armed conflicts in Namibia,
Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique that spilt over in turn to
Zambia, Zaire, and even Nigeria (which sent troops to Angola in 1978).
Going beyond the period chosen for the statistical part of our study,
it will be recalled that South Africa mounted armed incursions into
Lesotho in December I982 and Botswana in June 1985, as well as
Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe in May 1986, in order to attack
alleged African National Congress targets. Indeed, it was as a direct
response to South African and Rhodesian threats that Botswana
created a defence force in I977, having until then only police units, as

had Lesotho until they were similarly upgraded in 1986. And despite
having signed a secret security agreement with Pretoria in 1982,
Swaziland was raided on several occasions during I985-7 by armed
South Africans searching for members of the A.N.C.
3. Island Countries
There are six African countries that share no land boundary with
a neighbour - Cape Verde, Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Sao
Tome and Principe, and Seychelles - and of these only one was
involved in armed conflicts during 1978-80. If this is contrasted to the
continental countries of Africa, the difference is significant at the 5 per
cent level of confidence. This corresponds to the findings by Edward
Dommen concerning island states in general,1 but could suggest that
the following negative factor also operates: namely, that the absence of
neighbours reduces the probability of being involved in armed conflicts.
CONCLUSIONS
There is evidence that differences among developing countries, both

in Africa and more generally, in the relative size of their military
burdens are not solely - and, for many, not mainly - a reflection of
differences in wars or tensions with neighbours. Domestic factors,
particularly the need perceived by ruling elites to repress internal
opposition groups, as well as external relations with the global power-
blocs and the availability of foreign exchange to purchase arms from
abroad, are also major determinants of government decisions in regard
to military spending. Foreign investment in developing countries, by
contrast, would seem not to be a determinant of military expenditures,
being rather related to the degree of political and economic stability
perceived (or projected), itself inversely related to 'levels of military
effort', possibly in a complex way as suggested by L. M. Terrell.2
Separate regression analyses were also made for African countries of
the incidence of armed conflicts and of coups d'etat within the period
I978-80. The results revealed a significant negative relationship be-
tween economic growth and armed conflicts, and it would seem that
the latter were not sparked off by the slow growth of G.D.P. On the
1 Edward 'Some Characteristics of Island in World

Dommen, Distinguishing States',
Development, 8, i2, 1980, pp. 93I-44.
2 L. M. Terrell, 'Societal Stress, Political
Instability and Levels of Military Effort', in Journal
of ConflictResolution, xv, 3, 1971, pp. 329-46.

THE MILITARY BURDEN 40I
other hand, these factors alone are not particularly helpful in explaining
coups d'etat. In short, the causes of political violence are better sought
either in more intricate economic factors, or in political or sociological
influences, or in some combination of these.
An additional analysis showed that the military burden is not
significantly greater in African countries that are landlocked, nor do
they tend to have a higher incidence of armed conflicts than those that
have access to the sea. Moreover, violence during I978-80 did not,
in general, spread from one neighbouring country to another, the
exceptions being the victims of South Africa's destabilisation policies.
Finally, island countries were hardly involved in armed conflicts.
ANNEX: DATA SOURCES
Aid/G.D.P.: ratio average in 1978-80 as a percentage of average in 1972-3,

log-transformed. O.E.C.D., DevelopmentCo-operation(Paris), passim, and
various Reports.
Armed conflicts: FactsonFile (New York and Oxford), 1978, I979, and 1980.
Arms-supplier concentration: scale value assigned to reflect percentage
supplied from main source; o = up to 20%, = 21-40%, 2 = 4I-60%,
3 = 61-80 %, 4 = 8I-i0oo % U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency,
andArms Transfers(Washington, D.C.).
WorldMilitaryExpenditures
Central government expenditure: World Bank, World Tables (Washington,
D.C.), various issues.
Coups d'etat: Facts on File, 1978, 1979, and 1980.
Foreign direct investment: (i) ratio to total capital stock; book values of
foreign private direct investment from O.E.C.D., op. cit. passim, adjusted
to current valuation, log-transformed; authors' estimates of capital stock,
based on extrapolation of cross-country regressionsfor O.E.C.D. countries
of current replacement value (excluding housing and government sector) on
energy consumption; (ii) change in foreign capital stock, ibid.; and (iii)
foreign-investor concentration: scale value as for arms-supplier concen-
tration, depending on percentage of principal investing country in total
number of transnational subsidiaries or affiliates; United Nations, Trans-
national Corporationsin World Development: a third survey (New York, I983).
Foreign-exchange availability: UNCTAD, Handbookof International
Tradeand
DevelopmentStatistics (Geneva, I983), Supplement.
G.D.P. per capita: UNCTAD data bank, and World Tables.
G.D.P. growth rates: UNCTAD data bank, and United Nations, Handbookof
World DevelopmentStatistics (New York, I982).
Inter-state or civil wars: Sivard, op. cit. 1983; Institute of Strategic Studies,
Strategic Survey (London), passim; and Tom Hartman and John Mitchell,
A World Atlas of Military History, i945-1984 (London, 1984).
Military government/use of violence: Sivard, op. cit. I983.
Population: Handbook of World DevelopmentStatistics, 1982.


DOMMEM MAIZELS Military Burden Developing Countries

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

DOMMEM MAIZELS Military Burden Developing Countries

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

The Military Burden in Developing Countries

Author(s): Edward Dommen and Alfred Maizels

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

The Military Burden

IMPACT OF MILITARY EXPENDITURES ON ECONOMIC GROWTH:

A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE DEBATE

The controversy on this issue was provoked by a study of the

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

military expenditures.2 However, Benoit preferred to argue that the

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

Regression Coefficients for Effect of Military Expenditure (M.E.)

a Coefficients include indirect effects calculated from 2- or 3-stage models.

1 Ball, 'Defence and Development'.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

INFLUENCES ON MILITARY EXPENDITURE AND

Neo-classical economic theory assumes that the state is politically

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

1 SIPRI Yearbook, 1985, table 10.4.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

National Regional Global

I. Political Nature of the state Regional alliance Adherence to a global

A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FACTORS INFLUENCING

The distinction between domestic, regional, and global levels pro-

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

should not be taken as a definitive demonstration of the influence of

(i) The full sample

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

Regression Coefficients for Military Expenditure Ratios

Whole Sample African Sample

Ratio to Gross Ratio to Central Ratio to Ratio to

(I) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

D-W 199 i-88 I-8o0 87 1-64 I-5

1 Source: Maizels and Nissanke, loc. cit. tables 3, 4, and

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

coefficients for this variable, indicating that, on average, such regimes

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

(ii) The African sample

(iii) Military spendingand economicgrowth

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

to the latter's impact on the rate of economic growth, as already

THE MILITARY IN ACTION: FACTORS INFLUENCING

ARMED CONFLICT AND COUPS D ETAT

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

Military as percentage of central 0-05** 0o02 0-30*

R2 ?'543 0-266 0'351

being associated with lower growth in G.D.P. The multiple regression

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

Landlocked countries I3 12'99 7'02

SOME GEOGRAPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

1 Francois Doumenge, Enclavementet developpement(Paris, 1986).

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM

There is evidence that differences among developing countries, both

1 Edward 'Some Characteristics of Island in World

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 15:14:57 PM