Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T18:50:47.084Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

War Makes the Regime: Regional Rebellions and Political Militarization Worldwide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2019

Ferdinand Eibl Open the ORCID record for Ferdinand Eibl [Opens in a new window] ,
Steffen Hertog Open the ORCID record for Steffen Hertog [Opens in a new window]  and
Dan Slater
Ferdinand Eibl*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Economy, King's College London
Steffen Hertog
Affiliation:
Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science
Dan Slater
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Michigan
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: m.ferdinand.eibl@kcl.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

War can make states, but can it also make regimes? This article brings the growing literatures on authoritarianism and coups into conversation with the older research tradition analyzing the interplay between war and state formation. The authors offer a global empirical test of the argument that regional rebellions are especially likely to give rise to militarized authoritarian regimes. While this argument was initially developed in the context of Southeast Asia, the article deepens the original theory by furnishing a deductively grounded framework embedded in rational actor approaches in the coup and civil–military literatures. In support of the argument, quantitative tests confirm that regional rebellions make political militarization more likely not simply in a single region, but more generally.

Keywords

authoritarianismmilitary regimerebellioncivil war
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 1002 - 1023
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alesina, A et al. (2003) Fractionalization. Journal of Economic Growth 8, 155–194.Google Scholar
Allansson, M, Melander, E and Themnér, L (2017) Organized violence, 1989–2016. Journal of Peace Research 54, 574–587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banks, A (2011) Cross-National Time Series Data Archive. Available from http://www.databanksinternational.com (accessed 11 November 2015).Google Scholar
Bates, RH (1981) States and Markets in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policy. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Beck, NL (2008) Time-series cross-section methods. In Box-Steffensmeier, JM, Brady, HE and Collier, D (eds), Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 475–493.Google Scholar
Beck, NL (2015) Estimating Grouped Data Models with A Binary Dependent Variable and Fixed Effects: What Are the Issues? Rochester, NY: Annual Meeting of the Society for Political Methodology.Google Scholar
Beck, NL, Katz, JN and Tucker, R (1998) Taking time seriously: time-series-cross-section analysis with a binary dependent Variable. American Journal of Political Science 42, 1260–1288.Google Scholar
Bell, C and Sudduth, JK (2017) The causes and outcomes of coup during civil war. Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, 1432–1455.Google Scholar
Betts, RK (1991) Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bigelow, LS (1960) The 1960 election in Burma. Far Eastern Survey 29, 70–74.Google Scholar
Bischof, D (2017) New graphic schemes for Stata: plotplain & plottig. The Stata Journal 17, 748–759.Google Scholar
Boix, C and Stokes, SC (2003) Endogenous democratization. World Politics 55, 517–549.Google Scholar
Bolt, J and van Zanden, JL (2014) The Maddison project: collaborative research on historical national accounts. The Economic History Review 67, 627–651.Google Scholar
Brooks, RA (2008) Shaping Strategy: The Civil–Military Politics of Strategic Assessment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, RA (2019) Integrating the civil–military relations subfield. Annual Review of Political Science 22, 1–20.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, B et al. (1992) War and the fate of regimes: a comparative analysis. The American Political Science Review 86, 638–646.Google Scholar
Butwell, R and von der Mehden, F (1960) The 1960 election in Burma. Pacific Affairs 33, 144–157.Google Scholar
Callahan, MP (2005) Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Carter, DB and Signorino, CS (2010) Back to the future: modeling time dependence in binary data. Political Analysis 18, 271–292.Google Scholar
Chalk, P (2008) The Malay-Muslim Insurgency in Southern Thailand: Understanding the Conflict's Dynamic. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.Google Scholar
Chamberlain, G (1980) Analysis of covariance with qualitative data. Review of Economic Studies 47, 225–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamberlain, G (1982) Multivariate regression models for panel data. Journal of Econometrics 18, 5–46.Google Scholar
Chandra, S and Rudra, N (2015) Reassessing the links between regime type and economic performance: why some authoritarian regimes show stable growth and others do not. British Journal of Political Science 45, 253–285.Google Scholar
Chang, DW (1969) The military and nation-building in Korea, Burma and Pakistan. Asian Survey 9, 818–830.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiozza, G and Goemans, HE (2004) International conflict and the tenure of leaders: is war still ex post inefficient? American Journal of Political Science 48, 604–619.Google Scholar
CIA (1960a) Central Intelligence Bulletin, CIA-RDP79T00975A004900330001-1. Available from https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/ (accessed 1 March 2019).Google Scholar
CIA (1960b) Central Intelligence Bulletin, CIA-RDP79T00975A005000110001-3. Available from https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/ (accessed 1 March 2019).Google Scholar
CIA (1961a) Central Intelligence Bulletin, CIA-RDP79T00975A005500040001-6. Available from https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/ (accessed 1 March 2019).Google Scholar
CIA (1961b) Central Intelligence Bulletin, CIA-RDP79T00975A005500310001-6. Available from https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/ (accessed 1 January 2019).Google Scholar
CIA (1961c) Central Intelligence Bulletin, CIA-RDP79T00975A005700240001-2. Available from https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/ (accessed 1 January 2019).Google Scholar
Clausen, U (1982) Zur Politischen Entwicklung Mauretaniens. Africa Spectrum 17, 33–46.Google Scholar
Croissant, A (2007) Muslim insurgency, political violence, and democracy in Thailand. Terrorism and Political Violence 19, 1–18.Google Scholar
Croissant, A et al. (2010) Beyond the fallacy of coup-ism: conceptualizing civilian control of the military in emerging democracies. Democratization 17, 950–975.Google Scholar
Cunningham, DE (2006) Veto players and civil war duration. American Journal of Political Science 50, 875–892.Google Scholar
Cunningham, DE, Gleditsch, KS and Salehyan, I (2013) Non-state actors in civil wars: a new dataset. Conflict Management and Peace Science 30, 516–531.Google Scholar
Desch, MC (2001) Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Doeppers, DF (1972) An incident in the PRRI/Permesta rebellion of 1958. Indonesia 14, 182–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downing, B (1993) The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Eck, K (2015) Repression by proxy: how military purges and insurgency impact the delegation of coercion. Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, 924–946.Google Scholar
Egorov, G and Sonin, K (2011) Dictators and their viziers: endogenizing the loyalty-competence trade-off. Journal of the European Economic Association 9, 903–930.Google Scholar
Eibl, F, Hertog, S and Slater, D (2019) Replication Data for: War Makes the Regime: Regional Rebellions and Political Militarization Worldwide, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/DQ1W55, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:cv8HzUMABGinncTdSSWOnA==[fileUNF].Google Scholar
Ertman, T (1997) Birth of Leviathan. Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, JD (1995) Rationalist explanations for war. International Organization 49, 379–414.Google Scholar
Feaver, PD (1999) Civil–military relations. Annual Review of Political Science 2, 211–241.Google Scholar
Feaver, PD (1996) The civil–military problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the question of civilian control. Armed Forces & Society 23, 149–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feaver, PD and Gelpi, C (2011) Choosing Your Battles: American Civil–Military Relations and the Use of Force. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Feith, H and Lev, DS (1963) The end of the Indonesian rebellion. Pacific Affairs 36, 32.Google Scholar
Finer, SE (1962) The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics. London: Pall Mall Press.Google Scholar
Funston, J (2009) Governance in the South: is decentralization an option? In Funston, J (ed.), Divided Over Thaksin: Thailand's Coup and Problematic Transition. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, pp. 124–134.Google Scholar
Geddes, B, Frantz, E and Wright, J (2014) Military rule. Annual Review of Political Science 17, 147–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geddes, B, Wright, J and Frantz, E (2014) Autocratic breakdown and regime transition: a new data set. Perspectives on Politics 12, 313–331.Google Scholar
Gleditsch, NP et al. (2002) Armed conflict 1946–2001: a new dataset. Journal of Peace Research 39, 615–637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goemans, HE (2008) Which way out? The manner and consequences of losing office. Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, 771–794.Google Scholar
Greenhill, B, Ward, MD and Sacks, A (2011) The separation plot: a new visual method for evaluating the fit of binary models. American Journal of Political Science 55, 991–1002.Google Scholar
Hanmer, MJ and Ozan Kalkan, K (2013) Behind the curve: clarifying the best approach to calculating predicted probabilities and marginal effects from limited dependent variable models. American Journal of Political Science 57, 263–277.Google Scholar
Harish, SP and Liow, JC (2007) The coup and the conflict in Southern Thailand. Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 19, 161–184.Google Scholar
Heston, A, Summers, R and Aten, B (2012) Penn World Table Version 7.1. Available from https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/productivity/pwt/pwt-releases/pwt-7.1 (accessed 13 March 2018).Google Scholar
Hiroi, T and Omori, S (2013) Causes and triggers of coups d’état: an event history analysis. Politics & Policy 41, 39–64.Google Scholar
Huang, RL (2017) Myanmar's way to democracy and the limits of the 2015 elections. Asian Journal of Political Science 25, 25–44.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch (2007) No One Is Safe: Insurgent Attacks on Civilians in Thailand's Southern Border Provinces. New York: Human Rights Watch. Available from https://www.hrw.org/report/2007/08/27/no-one-safe/insurgent-attacks-civilians-thailands-southern-border-provinces (accessed 20 May 2019).Google Scholar
Huntington, SP (1957) The Soldier and the State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Huntington, SP (1968) Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
International Crisis Group (2005a) Southern Thailand: Insurgency, Not Jihad. Brussels: International Crisis Group.Google Scholar
International Crisis Group (2005b) Thailand's Emergency Decree: No Solution. Brussels: International Crisis Group.Google Scholar
International Crisis Group (2007) Southern Thailand: The Impact of the Coup. Brussels: International Crisis Group.Google Scholar
Johnson, J and Thyne, CL (2018) Squeaky Wheels and Troop Loyalty. Journal of Conflict Resolution 62, 597–625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalyvas, SN (2006) The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kasza, GJ (1996) War and comparative politics. Comparative Politics 28, 355–373.Google Scholar
Kingsbury, D (2003) Power Politics and the Indonesian Military. London: Routledge Curzon.Google Scholar
Lasswell, HD (1941) The garrison state. American Journal of Sociology 46, 455–468.Google Scholar
Leon, G (2014) Loyalty for sale? Military spending and coups d'etat. Public Choice 159, 363–383.Google Scholar
Lev, DS (1964) The political role of the army in Indonesia. Pacific Affairs 36, 349–364.Google Scholar
Marinov, N and Goemans, H (2014) Coups and democracy. British Journal of Political Science 44, 799–825.Google Scholar
Marshall, MG, Gurr, TR and Jaggers, K (2010) Polity IV Project: Dataset Users’ Manual. Arlington, VA/Severn, MD: Center for Systemic Peace.Google Scholar
Marshall, MG and Marshall, D (2014) Coup d’état Events, 1946–2013. Available from http://www.systemicpeace.org (accessed 11 September 2015).Google Scholar
Maung, M (1969) Burma and General Ne Win. London: Asia Publishing House.Google Scholar
McCargo, D (2006) Thaksin and the resurgence of violence in the Thai south: network monarchy strikes back? Critical Asian Studies 38, 39–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCargo, D (2007) The coup and the south. Asia Insights December, 12–14.Google Scholar
McGrath, LF (2015) Estimating onsets of binary events in panel data. Political Analysis 23, 534–549.Google Scholar
McMahon, RB and Slantchev, BL (2015) The guardianship dilemma: regime security through and from the armed forces. American Political Science Review 109, 297–313.Google Scholar
Mundlak, Y (1978) On the pooling of time series and cross section data. Econometrica 46, 69–85.Google Scholar
Narli, N (2000) Civil–military relations in Turkey. Turkish Studies 1, 107–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
New York Times (1960) Nu sees tensions reduced in Burma, 28 August.Google Scholar
New York Times (1989) Military coup in Sudan ousts civilian regime, 1 July.Google Scholar
Nordlinger, EA (1977) Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
North, DC and Weingast, BR (1989) Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutional governing public choice in seventeenth-century England. The Journal of Economic History 49, 803–832.Google Scholar
Pathmanand, U (2006) Thaksin's Achilles’ heel: the failure of hawkish approaches in the Thai south. Critical Asian Studies 38, 73–93.Google Scholar
Pazzanita, AG (1996) Historical Dictionary of Mauritania, 2nd edn. Lanham, MD and London: Scarecrow Press.Google Scholar
Pilster, U and Böhmelt, T (2011) Coup-proofing and military effectiveness in interstate wars, 1967–1999. Conflict Management and Peace Science 28, 331–350.Google Scholar
Piplani, V and Talmadge, C (2016) When war helps civil–military relations: prolonged interstate conflict and the reduced risk of coups. Journal of Conflict Resolution 60(8), 1368–1394.Google Scholar
Pongsudhirak, T (2006) Causes and Effects of Thailand's Coup. Ohmy News, 23 September.Google Scholar
Powell, JM and Thyne, CL (2011) Global instances of coups from 1950 to 2010: a new dataset. Journal of Peace Research 48, 249–259.Google Scholar
Przeworski, A and Limongi, F (1997) Modernization: theories and facts. World Politics 49, 155–183CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruhl, JM (1996) Redefining civil–military relations in Honduras. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 38, 33–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ron, J (2003) Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel. Berkley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schutte, S (2017) Geographic determinants of indiscriminate violence in civil wars. Conflict Management and Peace Science 34, 380–405.Google Scholar
Shah, A (2014) The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheridan, M (2006) Thai coup sparked by failed war on Islamists. The Sunday Times, 24 September.Google Scholar
Singer, JD et al. (1972) Capability distribution, uncertainty, and major power war, 1820–1965. In Russet, B (ed.), Peace, War, and Numbers. London: Sage, pp. 19–48.Google Scholar
Singh, N (2014) Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Slater, D (2003) Iron cage in an iron fist: authoritarian institutions and the personalization of power in Malaysia. Comparative Politics 36, 81–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slater, D (2010) Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Slater, D (2018) Violent origins of authoritarian variation: rebellion type and regime type in cold war Southeast Asia. Government and Opposition.Google Scholar
Slater, D and Smith, NR (2016) The power of counterrevolution: elitist origins of political order in postcolonial Asia and Africa. American Journal of Sociology 121, 1472–1516.Google Scholar
Smith, MJ (1991) Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. Zed Books.Google Scholar
Staniland, P (2008) Explaining civil–military relations in complex political environments: India and Pakistan in comparative perspective. Security Studies 17, 322–362.Google Scholar
Stepan, A (1988) Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Storey, I (2008) Southern discomfort: separatist conflict in the Kingdom of Thailand. Asian Affairs 35, 31–51.Google Scholar
Svolik, MW (2012) The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svolik, MW (2013) Contracting on violence the moral hazard in authoritarian repression and military intervention in politics. Journal of Conflict Resolution 57, 765–794.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thies, CG (2004) State building, interstate and intrastate rivalry: a study of post-colonial developing country extractive efforts, 1975–2000. International Studies Quarterly 48, 53–72.Google Scholar
Thompson, WR (1980) Corporate coup-maker grievances and types of regime targets. Comparative Political Studies 12, 485–496.Google Scholar
Thyne, C (2017) The impact of coups d’état on civil war duration. Conflict Management and Peace Science 34, 287–307.Google Scholar
Tilly, C (1985) War making and state making as organized crime. In Evans, PB, Rueschemeyer, D and Skocpol, T (eds), Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 169–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tilly, C (1992) Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990–1992. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Trager, FN (1963) The failure of U Nu and the return of the armed forces in Burma. The Review of Politics 25, 309–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waldner, D, Peterson, B and Shoup, J (2017) Against the grain of urban bias: elite conflict and the logic of coalition formation in colonial and post-colonial Africa. Studies in Comparative International Development 52, 327–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weeks, JL (2012) Strongmen and straw men: authoritarian regimes and the initiation of international conflict. American Political Science Review 106, 326–347.Google Scholar
Wig, T and Rod, EG (2016) Cues to coup plotters: elections as coup triggers in dictatorships. Journal of Conflict Resolution 60, 787–812.Google Scholar
Wikileaks (2005) Thailand: PCAOM CMDR ADM Fallon's Roundtable on the Muslim South. Available from https://wikileaks.org/ (accessed 1 January 2013).Google Scholar
Wikileaks (2006a) Lunch with PM Surayud. Available from https://wikileaks.org/ (accessed 1 January 2019).Google Scholar
Wikileaks (2006b) Southern Violence: The Police Search for Synchronicity. Available from https://wikileaks.org/ (accessed 1 January 2019).Google Scholar
World Bank (2017) World Development Indicators. Washington, DC: World Bank. Available from https://data.worldbank.org/ (accessed 18 July 2017).Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Eibl et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/DQ1W55
Link
Supplementary material: File

Eibl et al. supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Eibl et al. supplementary material(File)
File 727.6 KB