The Political Cost of War Mobilization in Democracies and Dictatorships

Abstract

Recent research concludes fighting or losing an interstate war is not costlier for democratic leaders than dictators, which implies most of our institutional explanations for differences in conflict behavior across regime type rest on empirically tenuous assumptions. I argue military mobilization, a fundamental but often overlooked aspect of war, should be costlier for democrats than dictators. Waging interstate war is associated with higher military spending and, often, lower social spending. Variation across regime type in the representation of the general public, civilian elite, and military in leaders’ winning coalitions should make democrats more likely than dictators to lose power given wartime patterns of government spending. This argument finds support during the period from 1950 to 2001. My findings provide microfoundations for a number of existing empirical results and suggest that differences in the conflict behavior of democracies and dictatorships should be largest when waging war requires a significant mobilization effort.

Understanding the Maintenance of Rivalries and Causes of Wars in the Middle East

“…Scholars have deemed arms races, regime type, and proximity to be critical factors in making states rivals and war more probable (Gibler, Rider and Hutchison 2005;Colaresi et al 2008;Carter 2015;Mohan 2016), but these studies have mainly focused on great powers or combination of great and other states. The Middle East is comprised of states with different attributes, and this region has seen multiple devastating interstate wars and intrastate wars.…”

“…Furthermore, states adopt arms races as a strategy for addressing security concerns. In the presence of militarized disputes and arms races, the intensity of rivalry increases, making the proximate disputes more salient and contesting (Carter 2015) than those taking place in the absence of mutual military buildup. This suggests that the outcomes of previous dispute and presence of salient issues give momentum to rivalry development and, in turn, arms races make the issues at stake and other disputes more salient.…”

“…These states have often been intimidating each other as well as other other states while manipulating the grievances, and preparing their military for mobilization. These kinds of notions are more noticeable in rivalry context (Carter 2015), suggesting that the changing structure affects the general perception of states regarding threat from rivalries. Thereby, enabling them to invest in military buildup.…”

“…However, how these factors independently affect rivalry and war. Studies have consistently demonstrated that arms races potentially escalate the conflictual relations and increase the likelihood of war (Diehl and Crescenzi 1998;Vasquez and Henehan 2001;Skogstad 2015;Carter 2015).…”

Conscription Systems, Political Survival, and Battlefield Deaths

“…Politicians may wish to solve this conundrum by spreading the costs of war strategically, placing the greatest burden on those whose support is immaterial to their hold on power. But many costs cannot be targeted in this way: labor dislocations, food shortages, commodity supply disruptions, and other disturbances to daily life are shared burdens (Carter 2017;Glick and Taylor 2008;Goldin and Lewis 1975). Taxes offer one means of focusing the economic cost of war on selected citizens; governments can also offer targeted incentives for contributing to the war effort, such as vouchers and, for businesses, military contracts (Bueno de Mesquita et al 2003;Rockoff 2012).…”