Civil-military Pathologies and Defeat in War

Abstract

This article uses an original data set, the Wartime Civil-military Relations Data Set, to test arguments about the causes of victory and defeat in war. Our analysis provides strong initial support for the notion that civil-military relations powerfully shape state prospects for victory and defeat. Specifically, states whose militaries have a significant internal role or whose regimes engage in coup-proofing appear to have a substantially lower probability of winning interstate wars, even when we account for the role of other important variables, including regime type and material capabilities. Crucially, our measures of civil-military relations include coup incidence but also move beyond it to detect more subtle indicators of civil-military relations. The resulting analysis should give us confidence in acknowledging the importance of nonmaterial variables in explaining war outcomes, while also paving the way for further research that can utilize and extend the data set.

Leader Survival Strategies and the Onset of Civil Conflict: A Coup-Proofing Paradox

“…Second, coup-proofing has been found to effectively deter coups (Pilster & Böhmelt, 2015; Powell, 2012; Roessler, 2011). Third, and more important to the current argument, coup-proofing has been argued to undermine military effectiveness (e.g., Biddle & Zirkle, 1996; Brown, Fariss, & McMahon, 2016; Narang & Talmadge, 2017; Pilster & Böhmelt, 2011; Quinlivan, 1999; Reiter & Stam, 1998; Talmadge, 2013, 2015).…”

“…Second, I review a growing literature that shows vulnerable leaders structurally coup-proof their regimes by building up “mutually suspicious” military organizations that “counterbalance” each other (Belkin & Schofer, 2003). Further analyses have demonstrated these coup-proofing efforts can effectively reduce the likelihood of coups (De Bruin, 2017; Marcum & Brown, 2017; Pilster & Böhmelt, 2015; Powell, 2012; Quinlivan, 1999; Rabinowitz & Jargowski, 2017; Rwengabo, 2012) and substantially weaken the military capacity of the state (e.g., Narang & Talmadge, 2017; Pilster & Böhmelt, 2011). Third, I argue for a conditional relationship between coup-proofing and civil war onset.…”

Mapping coercive institutions: The State Security Forces dataset, 1960–2010

“…For instance, the Pro-Government Militia Dataset (PGMD) tracks militias that are pro-government or government-sponsored but -in contrast to the SSF dataset -focuses on those that are not an official part of the state's security sector (Carey, Mitchell, & Lowe 2013). 1 Other datasets capture important aspects of civil-military relations and military staffing, including the degree of civilian control over the military (Narang & Talmadge, 2018), ethnic composition of military forces in particular regions (Harkness, 2018;Johnson & Thurber, 2017), and use of conscription (Margulies, 2018), but do not include information on the features of individual security forces in a global sample. The SSF dataset can thus complement these recent efforts.…”

Air superiority and battlefield victory

“…Why are some militaries more likely to win in battle than others? Some of the most common answers to this question are material resources (Desch, 2002), regime type (Reiter and Stam, 2002), adoption of the modern system (Biddle, 2004; Grauer and Horowitz, 2012), civil–military relations (Brooks, 2006; Narang and Talmadge, 2018), and military strategy (Bennett and Stam, 1996). We argue that a specific aspect of military power is critical to victory in modern conventional battles: air superiority.…”