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Generals in the Cabinet: Military Participation in

Government and International Conflict Initiation

Peter B. White

pbwhite@umd.edu

[Working paper, please do not circulate or cite without contacting author]

Word Count: 12,728

How does the presence of generals in a national cabinet affect a state's likelihood of international conflict? We know a

great deal about how regime type affects international conflict, but there is substantial variation within regime types in

the participation of military officers in the government. We know little about how this variation affects a state's conflict

propensity. In this article, I examine three competing arguments for the effect of military participation in government on

conflict initiation: military aggression, military conservatism, and civil-military competition. Military aggression suggests

that military involvement in government will tend to guide the state towards conflict, given a military predisposition to

favor the use of force. In contrast, military conservatism argues that military officers in government will lead the state to

be more selective in the application of force, given their familiarity with the costs of armed conflict. Civil-military

competition holds that when military officers and civilians share political power and may be in competition politically, a

variety of pathologies in national security deliberation and decision-making emerge. Here, mistakes in international

relations are more likely, and this leads to increased conflict propensity. I test these three propositions cross-nationally

using a new dataset of the number and type of positions held by military officers in national cabinets and state councils,

as well as extant data on international conflict and regime-type. I find strong support in favor of the civil-military

competition argument. Conflict initiation is more likely where military officers hold positions outside the realm of national

defense—indicating political power on the part of the military—and this effect is strongest when there is a strong civilian

counterpart in the government—indicating shared civilian-military power.

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Introduction

How does military participation in the government affect the likelihood that a country initiates

international conflict? Recent research has substantially advanced our understanding of the conflict

propensity of different types of military regimes (e.g., Weeks 2012, 2014), as well as how the military

background of state leaders influences their decisions to pursue international conflict (Horowitz and

Stam 2014; Horowitz, Stam, and Ellis 2015). However, across regimes-types and leaders there is

substantial variation in the levels of military involvement in government. The military is not absent

from government in regimes that aren't military dictatorships, and leaders with military background

sometimes have civilian cabinets and at other times, cabinets that are heavily staffed with military

officers. We don't understand the impact of military involvement in government on international

conflict outside of the background of the leader and the overall regime category.

In this article, I test three different arguments for the effect of military participation in

government on conflict initiation: Military Aggression, Military Conservatism, and Civil-Military Competition,

and generate hypotheses from each, so that each argument can be evaluated empirically. Military

Aggression argues that there are inherent attributes of military officers that make them favor military

solutions to foreign policy problems. Through selection into the military, risk-attitudes, and

socialization, military officers view military action more favorably and, when in government, will guide

the country towards increased international conflict. This will be particularly true in non-democracies,

given findings on the risk-acceptance of military officers who rise to political power in such a setting

(e.g., Horowitz, Stam, and Ellis 2015). This argument suggests that as the number of military officers

in the government increases, so too will that state's conflict propensity, though this effect will be most

clearly evident in non-democracies.

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In contrast, Military Conservatism suggests that, given their unique familiarity with the costs and

limitations of armed conflict, military officers are especially judicious with regards to the application

of force in international relations. Accordingly, as military officers have an increasing role in

government, conflict propensity will decrease. This conservatism will be most evident in democracies,

given that military officers who rise to political power in non-democracies tend to be more risk-

acceptant. The final argument is Civil-Military Competition. Rather than focusing on inherent attributes

of military officers, building on Brooks’ (2008) insights regarding civil-military relations and “strategic

assessment,” Civil-Military Competition focuses on the pathologies in deliberation and decision-making

that arise in governments where there is shared political power between military officers and civilian

elites. In such settings ultimate decision-making authority is unclear and information sharing between

the civilian and military portions of the government is poor. This increases the likelihood of mistakes

in foreign affairs and international conflict. This argument suggests that where the military is involved

in non-security aspects of the government—indicating shared political power and decision-making

authority—conflict propensity is higher, and this effect is strongest where there is also a strong civilian

elite in the regime.

I test these competing arguments quantitatively using new yearly, cross-national data on the

number of military officers in national cabinets and state councils and the type of role that they play

—the Military Participation in Government (MPG) data. In examining the initiation of militarized

disputes that rise to the level of actual violence (where there are fatalities), I find strong evidence in

support of the Civil-Military Competition argument. Rather than there being a broad trend towards

military conservatism or aggression, increased military officers in government correspond to the

increased likelihood that a state initiates violent international conflict when the military is involved in

the non-security aspects of government. And this is particularly true in regimes where there is a strong

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civilian elite—e.g., the effect of non-security military participation in government is particularly strong

in civilian one-party and civilian personalist regimes, as well as in democracies.

This article makes three main contributions. First, it substantially advances our understanding

of how the military influences foreign policy and conflict propensity. Second, it demonstrates

significant variation in military involvement in government across different regime types, and shows

that even within regimes, variation in the relative militarism or civilianization of the government is an

important explanatory factor in explaining international conflict. Third, it leverages new data on

military participation in government to adjudicate between three competing arguments in the literature

regarding military attitudes towards conflict, suggesting that it is not inherent traits of military officers

that exert an effect on conflict, but rather it is institutional arrangements in civil-military relations that

matter.

This article proceeds in six sections. In the first, I outline the existing literature on regime type,

the military, and international conflict. In the second, I outline the three competing arguments

explaining how the military influences international conflict. In the third, I introduce the new Military

Participation in Government (MPG) data, and discuss its application to international conflict and the

general research design. In the fourth section, I present the results of the empirical analysis. In the

fifth and sixth sections, I conduct additional analyses to verify the robustness of the main results and

conclude with some discussion of the scholarly and policy implications of the argument and results.

Literature

There is an expansive literature on the effect of regime type on international conflict. Much has been

written about the rarity with which democracies fight each other (e.g., Doyle 1986; Maoz and Russet

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1993; Schultz 1999; Huth and Allee 2002).1 Beyond democracies, there has been extensive progress in

disaggregating autocracy into distinct categories. Lai and Slater (2005) have found that military regimes

are more conflict prone than civilian dictatorships. Weeks (2012, 2014) has developed a four-party

typology of autocracies—regimes headed by "juntas" (regimes where the military as an institution

rules), "strongmen" (personalist dictators who are military officers), "bosses" (civilian personalist

dictatorships), and "machines" (civilian party regimes). Weeks finds, importantly, that civilian party

regimes are no more conflict-prone than democracies, while juntas, strongmen, and bosses are more

conflict-prone.

There has been another line of research on how the state leaders affect the conflict propensity

of the state. Much of this links implicitly with the regime-type literature, focusing on how leaders'

likelihood of punishment for defeat in international conflict varies across regime types and how this

in turn affects leaders' conflict behavior. Leaders in mixed regimes and autocracies face a higher

likelihood of punishment for defeat, and this punishment can also include substantial personal costs,

including imprisonment and death (Goemans 2000, 2008). Though they may face removal from office

in elections (Bueno de Mesquita et al 2004), particularly if they (or their party) are responsible for the

conflict (Croco 2011, 2015), elected leaders are unlikely to face high personal costs. Accordingly, they

are better able to seek peace and make concessions (Debs and Goemans 2010).

More recent literature has examined the effect of leader attributes on international conflict

initiation. Horowitz and Stam (2014) and Horowitz, Stam, and Ellis (2015) have found that the military

experience of state leaders matters a great deal, even when holding constant regime-type—specifically,

they find that former rebels and military officers without combat experience are particularly likely to

1 There is also work that attributes the Democratic Peace to other factors, such as trade (e.g., Gartzke 2007) or stable borders (e.g., Gibler 2007).

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initiate international conflict. Relatedly, Colgan (2013) finds that revolutions select more conflict-

prone leaders, which lead revolutionary states to become more conflict-prone; Weeks and Colgan

(2015) find that this is particularly true when the revolution leads to a personalist dictatorship.

We know a great deal about how leaders and political systems affect the conflict propensity of

states, yet there are significant gaps in our understanding. Notably, while we know that military-

dominated regimes are more likely to initiate international conflict (Weeks 2012, 2014; Lai and Slater

2005) and that certain types of military experience make leaders more likely to initiate conflict

(Horowitz and Stam 2014; Horowitz, Stam, and Ellis 2015), we don't understand the impact of military

involvement in government outside of the leader and the overall regime category. The military is not

absent from government in regimes that aren't military dictatorships. In a personalist context, in

Stalin's Soviet Union, the foremost active-duty general in the Red Army, Marshall Georgi Zhukov,

served as member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and later—with the army's

backing—played a king-maker role in supporting Kruschev's ascension and the downfall of NKVD2

chief Lavrenty Beria in 1953 following Stalin's death (Roberts, Ch. 11). He was made a member of the

ruling Presidium of the Politiburo in 1957—the first active-duty Soviet military officer to do so

(Colton 1981). In a single-party context, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has played an extensive,

and varied, role in government and politics throughout Communist rule in China. At the height of its

political power during the latter part of the Cultural Revolution, the PLA took control of many

government ministries as well as most provincial governments (MacFarquhar and Schoenals 2006).

Since then, while taking a reduced role and focusing on national security affairs, the PLA has

maintained multiple seats in both the Central Committee and Politburo of the Communist Party

(Miller 2015). Democracies also are not immune to military involvement in government, with the

2 The NKVD was the precursor to the KGB.

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records of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, and Sri Lanka showing periods where military cabinet

officials or parallel military ruling councils co-existed (at times uneasily) with elected civilian

governments. The recent appointment of a substantial number of recently-retired and active duty

generals to high-level positions in the Trump Administration has demonstrated that even in

consolidated democracies, high levels of military involvement in government are possible.

How does this type of military involvement in government—where the military is involved in

the highest levels of government, but does not necessarily control the government—affect the

likelihood that a state seeks international conflict? There are clear cases of civil-military dysfunction

contributing to international conflict that cannot easily be explained by overall regime type: for

example, the Pakistani military's possible role in autonomously initiating the 1999 Kargil War with

India3 and the role that political struggles between civilian and military factions played in

miscalculations by the Egyptian government in the lead-up to the 1967 war with Israel (Brooks 2008).

In 1999, Pakistan was headed by an elected civilian government, and Egypt in 1967 by a dominant

party government split between civilian technocrats and military officers. In each case, the military

was a political actor, but not the dominant one in the regime. What is needed is a theory to explain

how within-regime variation in the military's role in government affects the likelihood that a state seeks

conflict.

Theory

While overall regime-type is an important explanatory factor in understanding international conflict,

within regime-types there is important variation in the military's role in the government, and the effect

it can exert on domestic and international policy-making, including international conflict. As the

3 “Nawaz blames Musharraf for Kargil.” 5/28/2006. The Times of India. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Nawaz-blames-Musharraf-for-Kargil/articleshow/1581473.cms?. Accessed 4/7/2017.

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Egyptian and Pakistani cases suggest, when the military has a role in government, but is not the

dominant actor, it still affects the state's conflict propensity. Within regime types, how does variation

in military involvement in government affect conflict propensity? In this section, I outline three

competing arguments for the effect of military participation in government on conflict initiation:

Military Aggression, Military Conservatism, and Civil-Military Competition, and generate hypotheses from

each so that each argument can be evaluated empirically.

Military Aggression

The expectation that military officers should favor more aggressive postures in international relations

is intuitively appealing. In their training and experience, senior military officers may be socialized to

favor offensive military doctrines, which may lead them to favor "first-strike" options in international

relations (Snyder 1984; Posen 1984). They may also view the international environment as inherently

hostile and favor a "better safe than sorry" posture in international affairs that may privilege aggressive

action (Brunk, Secrest, Tamashiro 1990). Military officers may also favor international conflict,

because heightened tensions and conflict increase military resources (Secsher 2004)—i.e., the military

can anticipate a bigger budget and other resources if the likelihood that it will be needed to defend the

state increases. Indeed, some scholars argue that military conflict is a way for civilians to credibly

commit to the military a certain level of resources (Arbatli and Arbatli 2014)—and in a non-democratic

context, interstate war also tends to reduce the onerous, coup-proofing controls sometimes placed on

militaries (Talmadge 2013). Weeks (2012, 2015) argues that generally-speaking military officers are

socialized to view military action favorably for resolving international disputes and to view it as less

costly. In line with Weeks, in regimes where military officers are the state leader's "audience," there

should be more initiation of international conflict as the leader responds to their audience's

preferences. Logically, then, as the number of military officers in the government increases—and the

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size of the military audience in the regime increases, so should the state's propensity for international

conflict.

• H1: As military participation in government increases, so too does the likelihood of international conflict

initiation.

Horowitz, Stam, and Ellis (2015, hereafter HSE) agree that military socialization does occur, but the

enthusiasm for military action that this may engender is tempered by actual combat experience, which

exposes soldiers to the extreme personal costs of war. Accordingly, in examining how leader

experiences affect conflict, HSE argue that, generally, leaders with military experience that does not

include combat should be particularly likely to begin international conflicts. However, this differential

effect should mainly apply in democracies, whereas in autocracies those that actually rise to power will

be conflict-prone, because successfully taking power in an autocracy requires someone to be especially

risk-acceptant. They argue that there is a selection process in autocracies, whereby those officers who

have reacted to combat experience by becoming more cautious are unlikely to seek power in an

autocratic setting, given the inherent danger and riskiness of the path to power in autocracies. They

argue that military experience—regardless of whether or not it involved combat—should be

associated with more aggressive behavior in terms of international conflict initiation in such regimes.

If this applies to state leaders with a military background, it may also apply to military officers who

rise to high level positions in non-democratic government short of state leader, such as cabinet

ministers. Military officers who rise to positions of power in the government may be especially

aggressive in a non-democratic setting.

• H1b: The positive effect of military participation in government on international conflict should be strongest in

non-democracies.

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Military Conservatism

The inverse of the Military Aggression argument is Military Conservatism. Related to HSE's argument that

combat should temper military enthusiasm for aggressive foreign policy approaches, there is a

literature that argues for military conservatism regarding the use of force. In his seminal theory,

Huntington (1957, Ch. 3) argues that military officers are characterized by "Conservative Realism,"

where they view the international environment in terms of potential threats and value security above

all else, but see war as a (sometimes necessary) last resort that carries with it extreme danger. There is

some empirical evidence in support of this. In several surveys of retired and current American military

officers and civilian foreign policy practitioners, there have been findings that those with a military

background are no more likely to favor military action in response to foreign policy problems than

civilians—though military officers and veterans generally favor escalation to higher levels of force

once conflict has begun (e.g., Feaver and Gelpi 2011; Betts 1991). Because military members bear the

potential costs of war most acutely and are also uniquely qualified to evaluate the limitations of military

force, when the military is more involved in the highest levels of government, there may be reduced

propensity to engage in international conflict.

• H2: Military participation in government reduces the likelihood of international conflict initiation.

Weeks' (2014) notes that much of the evidence in support of military conservatism focuses on

democracies—indeed, specifically on the American case. This combined with HSE's insight regarding

the higher risk acceptance of military officers who rise to political power in non-democracies, suggests

that any negative effect that military involvement in government has on conflict initiation should be

unique to, or strongest in, democracies.

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• H2B: The negative effect of military participation in government on international conflict initiation is strongest

in democracies.

Civil-military Competition

Both the Military Aggression and Military Conservatism arguments posit that there are inherent attributes

in military officers that predispose them to more conservative or aggressive postures in international

relations. In some cases, these vary across regime type, but any varied effect is not driven by the

political institutions but on the type of officer likely to rise to high-level government positions in

different regime types. A third approach, Civil-Military Competition, is generally agnostic regarding any

inherent military officer predisposition to conflict, instead arguing that where civilians and military

elites are sharing and in competition over political power, mistakes in policy-making and crisis decision-

making are more likely, and these mistakes can lead states to international conflict. The Civil-Military

Competition argument focuses on institutional pathologies, while both the Aggression and Conservatism

arguments focus on individual traits.

This approach owes much to Risa Brooks' (2008) work on how various patterns of civil-

military relations at the highest levels of government affect states' "strategic assessment." Brooks

demonstrates that both preference divergence and sharing political power between civilian and military

elites negatively affect a government's ability to effectively process information and intelligence and

make sound foreign policy decisions. The combination of the two—high civil-military preference

divergence and shared political power between the two—is particularly corrosive.

Brooks argues that when politicians and military officers share political power—where the

military is a part of or has influence over the ruling coalition—foreign policy decision-making authority

is contested and unclear, which may lend itself to hasty or "ad hoc" decisions in a crisis. When it is

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not clear who has ultimate decision-making authority regarding international conflict—civilian or

military members of the government—military and civilian officials may issue contradictory orders,

postpone a decision, or fail to reach decisive agreement on a decision. This was what occurred in the

lead-up to Egypt’s 1967 war with Israel, when disagreements between Nasser and army chief Field

Marshall Hakm ‘Amer led to indecision and then contradictory orders which gave Egyptian

deployments to the Sinai Peninsula a lurching, “stop and go” quality. Further, the diffusion of ultimate

authority between Nasser and ‘Amer meant that ‘Amer was able to unilaterally escalate tensions with

Israel by pre-positioning troops close to the vital Straits of Tiran without civilian authorization (Brooks

2008, 89-91). With an unsteady deployment of forces and military leaders pursuing unilateral action,

the negative consequences for Egypt’s ability to effectively signal to Israel in the lead-up to the conflict

and for both sides to find an “off-ramp” on the path to war are clear. In addition to ‘Amer’s unilateral

deployments in 1967, the actions of Pakistan’s military in the 1999 Kargil conflict also raise the

possibility that in government with contested civilian-military authority, the military may pursue

entrepreneurial military action without authorization from or coordination with the civilian arm of the

government, and that this action can ultimately lead to war.

Further, Brooks argues, where the military has autonomous political power, it is unlikely that

the state's decision-making process is fully coordinated between the military, diplomatic, and

intelligence arms of the government. There is little in the way of consultation and joint decision-

making. Civilian politicians, diplomats, and technocrats may have a more nuanced view of how to

approach international affairs (Desch 1999, 6), and may therefore be better suited to make the ultimate

decisions regarding international conflict. Military influence in traditionally civilian areas of

government means that deliberations and decisions regarding foreign policy dilemmas are likely to

focus on the tactical military dimension rather than taking into account broader political or diplomatic

factors, such as the regional context or the reaction of allies, that might make states reconsider military

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action. This is not because of any pathological tendency of military officer to favor military action,

rather it reflects officers' functional expertise and the military's organizational focus on fighting and

winning armed conflicts to the exclusion of other considerations.

Brooks also argues that the deleterious effects of civil-military power-sharing may be

compounded where there is also a severe preference divergence between military and civilian leaders.

Here, states will be "devastatingly unprepared to manage their international relations" (Brooks 2008,

5). Communication between civilian and military leaders breaks-down and the military is unlikely to

engage in comprehensive information-sharing with the civilian leadership. Taken a step further, this

means that not only will the state leader lack clear information regarding an international opponent’s

capabilities and intentions, s/he will be unlikely to have a clear picture of her/his own capabilities. This

can lead the leader to take a more aggressive posture in a potential conflict than is warranted and

contribute to bargaining break-down and the escalation to violence (Brooks 2008, Ch. 1). In addition

to this, it is also likely that in a situation where the military and civilian leaders are bargaining over the

relative political power of the military and a violent confrontation between civilian and military

authorities is possible (e.g., Svolik 2012), the military will have the added incentive to potentially inflate

its own capabilities in order to increase its bargaining power vis-a-vis the civilian government. This

also may have the consequence of giving the state leader an overly optimistic impression of her/his

military's capabilities in an international confrontation, further increasing the likelihood of

miscalculation and bargaining failure in the international setting.

The holding of political power by military officers introduces a series of pathologies into the

decision-making process that may lead to conflict. Poor information-sharing and unclear decision-

making authority increase the likelihood of miscalculation and conflict. When the military holds a

share of political power it is likely that there will be military officers at high levels of government, but

this will not be limited to the security sector. In many states without undue military intrusion into

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politics, including in democracies, a military minister of defense or national security adviser is very

common or even de riguer and does not signify shared political power or pathologies in civil-military

relations. Rather it reflects the military's primary role in advising non-military decision-makers on

defense-related decisions. Indeed, in the present day Chinese government, the PLA is heavily

represented in national security-bodies, such as the Central Military Commission, but is absent from

the highest-level general decision-making bodies, such as the Presidium of the Politiburo of the

Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and has ceded ultimate decision-making authority to the civilian

cadres of the CCP (Miller 2015). It is military intrusion into traditionally civilian areas of the decision-

making process that is indicative of shared power and decision-making authority at the highest levels

of government, which should contribute to poor deliberation and decision-making that can lead to

increased propensity for international conflict.

• H3: As military participation in areas of government outside of defense increases, so too does the likelihood of

international conflict.

It is important to emphasize, however, that the effect of military intrusion into the government on

conflict initiation should be greatest where there is truly shared power between civilians and the military.

Military dominance of politics also negatively affects foreign policy decision-making but not to the

same degree that contested political power between civilian and military factions (Brooks 2008).

Indeed, Sechser (2004) finds that the most likely states to initiate conflict are those with "weak civilian"

control rather than outright military regimes. Accordingly, the effect of non-security military

participation in government should be greatest where there is also a strong civilian component to the

regime. It follows that the effect should be strongest in states where there is not a military dictator or

junta at the head of the government. Where military involvement in non-security matters co-exists

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with a civilian elite at the head of government—in what Weeks (2014) terms "boss" or "party machine"

regimes—and also in democracies4—its effect on conflict initiation should be greater.

• H3b: As military participation in areas of government outside of defense increases, so too does the likelihood

of international conflict initiation. This effect will be greatest in regimes where there is a powerful civilian elite.

In this section I have outlined three potential theoretical explanations for the effect of military

involvement in the government on international conflict propensity: Military Aggression suggests that

as the number of military officers in the government increases, so too will that state's conflict

propensity, though this effect will be most clearly evident in non-democracies. In contrast, Military

Conservatism suggests that as military officers have an increasing role in government, conflict propensity

will decrease, and this will be most evident in democracies. The Civil-Military Competition argument

suggests that where the military is involved in non-security aspects of the government, indicating

shared political power and decision-making authority, conflict propensity is higher, and this effect is

strongest where there is also a strong civilian elite in the regime. In the next section I outline an

empirical strategy for evaluating these arguments.

Research Design

The hypotheses generated by the different theoretical arguments anticipate varied effects for military

involvement in government outside of overall regime-type. The hypotheses related to civil-military

power-sharing also anticipate that military involvement in government in non-security areas will have

4 Critically, the argument is not that democracies are more conflict prone, rather it is that in democracies where the military is involved in traditionally civilian areas of government, the effect of that military involvement in government on conflict initiation is particularly severe, because it involves shared (or contested) political power between military and civilian elites. Pakistan at various times in its history may offer a suitable example of this dynamic.

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the strongest effect. What is needed is data that captures the number and type of cabinet- and state

council-level positions held by military officers in a range of states over time and disaggregates

according to whether the military officers have security or non-security responsibilities. The new

Military Participation in Government data (MPG) that I have collected fulfills this need.

The MPG data is a human-coded dataset where coders consulted the Europa World Yearbook

from 1964-2008 for yearly rosters of national cabinets, state councils, and other decision-making

bodies in the executive.5 From these rosters, coders counted the number of individuals in the

government and the number that were military officers—as evidenced by their military rank, whether

active-duty or retired.6 To minimize the amount of subjective decision-making by coders, coders

counted individuals not portfolios.7 The state-leader was not considered in the counts so as to properly

measure the military's institutional role in national politics and avoid conflating an institutional role for

the military with the leader having a military title.8

5Europa records information once per year for each country and in most cases does not account for changes in government that may occur after the date of publishing. Accordingly, individuals who both take and leave office in between two volumes may not appear in the data. This is an issue common in other country-year data on cabinet composition that uses almanacs or other sources that are published once per year (see, e.g., Arriola and Johnson 2013, Appendix A). 6 In rare country-years where military ranks were omitted, I examined additional secondary sources to address any gaps in the Europa rosters. Retired military rank is indicated in Europa with “ret.” next to the individual’s military rank. This is less objective and consistent than active-duty rank, given that “retired” in the military context does not merely mean that the individual served in the armed forces. In most countries retired status is granted after a certain number of years in the military (20 in the United States military) or a certain rank; the specifics of the regulations governing retired status may vary by country, but usually involve high ranks (e.g., generals or admirals). In robustness checks, the analysis is limited to only active-duty officers, who comprise the large majority of military officers represented in the MPG data. 7 So if an individual were both Minister of Defense and Minister of the Interior, s/he was only counted once. In many cases, the number of portfolios in a particular minister's brief was ambiguous. For example, while "Minister of Defense and Rural Development" clearly entails two separate portfolios; "Minister of Rural Development and Agriculture" could pertain to one or two separate portfolios. Counting individuals, accordingly, presented a much more objective approach that would be consistently applied across coders. 8 The state leader was determined using the Archigos data (Goemans, Gleditsch, and Chiozza 2009).

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Other than the state leader, all listed individuals in the Europa rosters were counted—with the

exclusion of political party leadership,9 the legislature, and agency or ministry-heads explicitly noted

to not be a part of the government. The coding incorporated a range of executive-level bodies,

including cabinets, state councils, "revolutionary command councils," presidiums, and privy councils.

Ministers, deputy ministers, state secretaries, and council-members were counted. Vice presidents and

deputy prime ministers were also included, as were leadership positions, such as monarch, prime

minister, and president—if they were not held by state leader.

The counts were divided into security- and non-security components. Government-members

were counted in either the security or non-security count based on whether any of their listed

portfolios pertained to security or the armed forces. For example, if an individual were Deputy Prime

Minister and Minister of Defense, s/he would be counted in the security count, because of his/her

Defense portfolio. In this way, the coding of the non-security count is relatively conservative in that it

only counts individuals whose portfolios have no direct relevance to defense or the armed forces.

Despite this conservative coding rule, incidences of military officers holding non-security positions

occur with relatively high frequency—in 21.69% of country-years coded (see Table 1).

9 In the coding it was observed that there is substantial overlap between the leadership of the dominant party in one-party regimes and cabinet-level positions in the government, so an accounting of cabinet-level positions should provide a good overall picture of the level of military involvement in government and politics in these regimes.

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Table 1: Military officers in security and non-security roles (1964-2008, cell percentages are proportion of total)

Military officer in non-security role

Military officer in security role No Yes Total

No 3,551 403 3,954

54.23% 6.15% 60.38%

Yes 1,420 1,174 2,594

21.69% 17.93% 39.62%

Total 4,971 1,577 6,548

75.92% 24.08%

In more detail, the security/non-security distinction between government members’ portfolios was

made based on the responsibilities implied by the position's title. The Ministries of Defense, Foreign

Affairs, Justice, and Interior were considered to be security-related—in addition, so too were positions

with “security” in the title—excluding Social Security and Food Security—and also positions related

to borders, counter-narcotics, military branches, the policy-gendarmerie, or military industries.

Cabinet-level positions related to the administration of specific international or domestic territories—

e.g., Minister of Chittagong Hill Affairs (Bangladesh) or Minister of Mainland Affairs (Taiwan)—were

also considered security-related positions.10 Other positions counted in the coding of security/armed

forces positions included positions related to nuclear energy, secondary foreign affairs ministries that

did not explicitly pertain to economic matters, development, international aid, and positions pertaining

to civil defense or public order. All positions that did not meet the criteria for security-related were

considered to be non-security-related. Examples in the data of non-security positions held by military

officers include various economic ministries, such as the "Minister of Civil Aviation" (e.g., Egypt,

10 This does not include provincial governorships rather it captures positions in the national government related to a specific, usually strategic or conflict-prone territory.

19

2002-2008) and ministries related to social services such as the Minister of Health (e.g., Sierra Leone,

1967), as well as, in many cases, positions that relate to the general political leadership of the country,

such as the royal Privy Council members in Thailand (1964-2008).

Figure 1: Proportion of states with military officers in government, security and non-security

roles (1964-2008)

Figure 1 shows the proportion of states that have military officers in cabinets and state council

equivalents for each year from 1964-2008, differentiating by whether there were officers in a security

or non-security role. Two things are immediately clear. Military involvement in the security sector for

military officers is always more common than in non-security areas. The gap between the percentage

of states with military officers in cabinet-level security roles and those with military officers in non-

security roles is always at least seven percentage points, and is often more than ten percentage points.

20

Also, it is clear that a greater share of states in the international system see military involvement in

government during the Cold War. Military involvement in the security sector of government reaches

its highest point in 1989 with more than 50% of states having a military officer in a cabinet-equivalent

security role in the national government. The peak in military involvement in non-security areas of

government was reached in 1978, when more than 37% of states had a military officer in a cabinet-

equivalent non-security role. This likely stems from the relative frequency of military regimes during

that period. For both types of military involvement in government, there was a steep drop off with

the end of the Cold War. Some of this drop-off can likely be attributed to the proliferation of new

regimes with the break-up of the Soviet Union—many of which began with civilianized governments.

It is notable, however, that decline in military involvement in government at the end of the Cold War

has not continued in the post-Cold War period, with non-security involvement never dropping below

12% of states and security involvement never below 29% of states.

To examine the effect of military involvement in government on conflict initiation, I use as

independent variables counts of the number of military officers in government, aggregating all military

officers in government (MPG) and differentiating by role—i.e., security (Security MPG) vs. non-security

(Non-security MPG). For the dependent variable, I generated an indicator for whether or not a state

initiated a militarized interstate dispute (MID) in a given year using the MID 4.0 data from the

Correlates of War Project (Palmer et al 2015). I also generated an indicator for whether or not a state

initiated a MID that resulted in fatalities in a given year to examine whether any effect for Security MPG

or Non-security MPG extends to MIDs that involve at least some interstate violence (as opposed to just

threats). I used both of these indicators to examine international conflict initiation at the country-year

level of analysis (with directed-dyads examined in the appendix).

21

Critically, the theory argues that MPG has an effect on conflict initiation outside of regime

type. To ensure that the analyses do not conflate any effect for military involvement in government

with overall regime characteristics, I include Weeks' (2012) autocratic regime-type indicators for

"boss" (civilian personalist dictators), "strongman" (military personalist dictators), "machine" (single-

party systems), and "junta" (institutional military systems) regimes. I include also Weeks' indicator for

other non-democratic regime-types, so that the base category is democracies. Effectively, this

approach gives each regime type its own intercept and captures the effect of within-regime variation

in military participation in government on conflict initiation. Figure 2 shows the averages of the

different MPG counts across Weeks’ regime typology. Here, it is evident that juntas and strongmen

regimes are very similar in their (high) levels of military involvement in government, as are boss

regimes, machines, and other non-democracies, while democracies have substantially lower levels of

military involvement than all non-democratic regime-types.

Figure 2: Mean MPG (1964-2000) by regime-type

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

MPG averages by regime-type

MPG Security MPG Non-security MPG

22

It is important to also separate the effect of MPG from the characteristics of the state leader,

which may make particular leaders more or less likely to bring military officers into the government.

Horowitz, Ellis, and Stam (2015) have examined extensively the role that leader military experience

plays in the decision to use force in international relations. They find that former soldiers without

combat experience and former rebels are particularly likely to initiate conflict. Accordingly, I include

indicators for whether the leader was a former soldier or officer with combat experience, without

combat experience, or a former rebel—with the base category being no rebel or military experience.

Importantly, while HSE conduct leader-year analysis, I am using the country-year, so I aggregate

HSE's leader-year data to this level of analysis. Essentially, this means that the three HSE indicators

for leader military experience capture whether or not a country had a leader with those attributes in a

given year. In years where there were one or more leadership changes, these indicators will account

for the background of multiple leaders.

Other aspects of the model specification build on Weeks' analyses of international conflict

initiation. In addition to state capability controls, such as the state's value in the Composite Index of

National Capabilities (CINC score, Singer, Bremer, and Stuckey 1972) and major power status, I

include Weeks' indicator for whether a state has had "substantial domestic institutional change within

the past three years" (Weeks 2012, 338), which controls for the conflict-proneness of new and

transitioning regimes (e.g., Colgan 2010; Mansfield and Snyder 2007). Given the demonstrated

connection between intra- and interstate armed conflict (e.g., Gleditsch, Salehyan, and Schultz 2009),

I included also an indicator coded as one if the state was experiencing an internal armed conflict within

its own borders that resulted in at least 25 battle-deaths in that year—using the UCDP/PRIO Armed

Conflict Dataset (Themner and Wallensteen 2014). Another critical issue is to ensure that any

relationship found between military involvement in government and international conflict propensity

is not driven by a dynamic whereby states with histories of conflict anticipate future conflict and

23

accordingly see militarizing of their governments in advance of future conflict. Accordingly, I control

for state's history of conflict in two ways. The first is the inclusion of a count of the total number of

MIDs that a state has experienced since 1946. The second, capturing how recent the last initiated

conflict was, is the inclusion of a cubic polynomial of a count of the years since the last MID initiation

by the state (or 1946, whichever is more recent). This has the added benefit of addressing temporal

dependence with a binary dependent variable (Carter and Signorino 2010).

Table 2: Descriptive Statistics

Variable Mean

Std. Dev

Min Max Obs.

MID initiation 0.120 0.324 0 1 7,912

Fatal MID initiation 0.029 0.167 0 1 7,912

MPG 1.579 3.136 0 45 5,269

Security MPG 0.714 1.122 0 9 5,267

Non-security MPG 0.868 2.542 0 42 5,268

Junta regime 0.064 0.244 0 1 5,667

Strongman regime 0.905 0.287 0 1 5,667

Machine regime 0.099 0.299 0 1 5,667

Boss regime 0.092 0.289 0 1 5,667

Other non-democracy 0.168 0.374 0 1 4,892

New/unstable regime 0.195 0.396 0 1 5,094

Leader combat experience 0.234 0.423 0 1 5,701

Leader non-combat experience

0.133 0.340 0 1 5,699

Leader rebel experience 0.361 0.480 0 1 5,706

Major power 0.025 0.155 0 1 7,535

Civil war 0.163 0.370 0 1 5,575

CINC 0.008 0.022 <0.001 0.209 4,675

Cumulative MIDs 3.443 6.239 0 46 7,912

In all models, the right-hand side variables were lagged by one year to address potential reverse

causality—i.e., to address concerns that the militarization of government may occur in response to

24

conflict. Robust standard errors were calculated by clustering on country. Given the binary nature of

the dependent variable, I used logistic regression.

Results

Table 3 shows the results from country-year analysis of MID initiation, where the independent variable

is the aggregated count of military participation in government (MPG), collapsing both security- and

non-security military involvement. The analysis examines separately MPG's impact on the initiation

of MIDs and also MID's that result in fatalities. Once control variables are added (Models 2 &3) MPG

is not significant in the MIDs model, but is highly significant and positive throughout the models

where the dependent variable is whether or not the state initiated a MID that resulted in fatalities. This

suggests that where military involvement in government influences conflict initiation, it is generally in

those conflicts that ultimately result in actual violence—e.g., not those that escalate to only threats,

maneuvers or other "sabre-rattling."

Table 4 shows results for the same analysis, but where MPG is disaggregated into its security

and non-security components. The results here are striking and demonstrate that the positive effect

for MPG on the initiation of MIDs with fatalities shown in Table 3 is driven primarily by military

involvement in the non-security aspects of government. In the fatal MIDs analysis, both the security

and non-security MPG counts are positive, but while the security count fails to reach even marginal

levels of significance across the models, non-security MPG is positive and significant at at least the

.01 level in all models. When MIDs that result in fatalities are examined, the results from the country-

year analysis demonstrate that MPG is positively associated with conflict initiation, but this effect is

driven by non-security participation in government.

25

Table 3: Military participation in government and international conflict initiation

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Basic Regime &

Leader Full

Model Fatal - Basic

Fatal - Regime & Leader

Fatal - Full Model

MPG 0.020* 0.005 0.001 0.037** 0.055** 0.056** (0.008) (0.012) (0.012) (0.010) (0.012) (0.015)

Junta regime -0.561* -0.166 -0.951** -0.724* (0.221) (0.181) (0.315) (0.350)

Strongman regime -0.237 -0.063 -0.034 0.144 (0.220) (0.181) (0.282) (0.274)

Machine regime -0.187 -0.379* -0.222 -0.571+ (0.218) (0.167) (0.232) (0.308)

Boss regime -0.066 -0.050 -0.037 0.014 (0.203) (0.178) (0.237) (0.235)

Other non-democracy

-0.097 0.065 -0.108 -0.037

(0.192) (0.162) (0.212) (0.258) New|unstable

regime -0.097 -0.087 0.167 0.128

(0.128) (0.140) (0.198) (0.231) Leader combat 0.196 -0.079 0.254 0.164

(0.161) (0.136) (0.194) (0.216) Leader non-combat 0.282 0.061 0.142 0.028

(0.175) (0.137) (0.194) (0.223) Leader rebel 0.199 0.252* 0.125 0.158

(0.146) (0.112) (0.158) (0.167) Major power 0.147 0.085

(0.148) (0.181) Civil war 0.401** 0.251

(0.121) (0.187) Cumulative MIDs 0.049** 0.043**

(0.009) (0.009) CINC 8.370** 2.065

(2.259) (1.827) Peace-years -

0.329** -0.300** -0.215** -0.180** -0.100* -0.069

(0.029) (0.032) (0.026) (0.034) (0.045) (0.051) Constant -

0.520** -0.482** -1.270** -1.746** -1.998** -2.812**

(0.124) (0.152) (0.132) (0.129) (0.181) (0.296)

Observations 6,548 4,767 4,273 6,548 4,767 4,273

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Polynomial of peace-years not shown)

26

Table 4: Military security- and non-security participation in government and international conflict initiation.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Basic Regime &

Leader Full

Model Fatal - Basic

Fatal - Regime & Leader

Fatal - Full Model

Security MPG 0.017 -0.022 -0.051 0.038 0.025 0.022 (0.047) (0.045) (0.045) (0.063) (0.075) (0.087)

Non-security MPG 0.021* 0.011 0.013 0.037** 0.059** 0.061** (0.010) (0.014) (0.014) (0.011) (0.013) (0.015)

Junta regime -0.556* -0.155 -0.953** -0.722* (0.220) (0.180) (0.316) (0.352)

Strongman regime -0.226 -0.038 -0.019 0.167 (0.217) (0.178) (0.280) (0.276)

Machine regime -0.173 -0.351* -0.201 -0.542+ (0.211) (0.166) (0.241) (0.323)

Boss regime -0.053 -0.022 -0.021 0.039 (0.200) (0.179) (0.241) (0.253)

Other non-democracy

-0.088 0.086 -0.097 -0.018

(0.189) (0.161) (0.215) (0.268) New|unstable

regime -0.095 -0.082 0.168 0.133

(0.128) (0.140) (0.199) (0.232) Leader combat 0.193 -0.088 0.251 0.159

(0.160) (0.135) (0.193) (0.213) Leader non-combat 0.283 0.060 0.147 0.033

(0.175) (0.135) (0.195) (0.224) Leader rebel 0.201 0.257* 0.131 0.162

(0.148) (0.112) (0.157) (0.167) Major power 0.128 0.082

(0.152) (0.181) Civil war 0.400** 0.249

(0.120) (0.188) Cumulative MIDs 0.050** 0.043**

(0.009) (0.010) CINC 8.542** 2.046

(2.226) (1.808) Peace-years -

0.328** -0.299** -0.214** -0.180** -0.100* -0.069

(0.029) (0.032) (0.026) (0.034) (0.045) (0.051) Constant -

0.518** -0.474** -1.257** -1.746** -1.989** -2.805**

(0.127) (0.153) (0.130) (0.135) (0.178) (0.293)

Observations 6,546 4,765 4,271 6,546 4,765 4,271

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Polynomial of peace-years not shown)

27

At first glance some of the results for the control variables are surprising. For example, in many of the

models, the results suggest that juntas are less likely to initiate international conflict. This result should

be interpreted very cautiously given that these models include counts for the number of military

officers in government as well as the leader’s military background. Essentially, the coefficient for juntas

(and the other regime types) show the effect when controlling for two essential attributes of most

military regimes—the presence of a large number of military officers in the government—as well as

the military background of the leader (through the inclusion of the HSE indicators). Indeed, these

factors are key inputs into the “militarism” and “personalism” indices from which the Weeks regime

typology is coded (Weeks 2012, 2014). The intent here is certainly not to suggest that juntas (or other

regime types) are less conflict prone—or that regime-type does not influence conflict propensity, but

simply to control for the baseline conflict propensity of various regime-types in order to provide

confidence that the results for MPG are not merely picking up the overall conflict-propensity of

military regimes.11 Indeed, when the MPG counts are dropped from the model, the apparent negative

effect for juntas disappears.

While the logit coefficients indicate the significance and direction of the effect, they do not

give an easily interpreted sense for the substantive impact of MPG on the likelihood that a state

initiates international conflict in a given year. Figures 3 and 4 plot the predicted probabilities of a state

initiating a MID that results in fatalities in a given year at different levels of MPG and Non-security

11 Similarly, the results for the leaders with military background are generally not significant—though the finding for Leader Rebel in the MIDs model is in line with HSE’s findings. The lack of significance for a leader’s non-combat military experience does not present a challenge to HSE’s findings for several reasons. First, there are essential differences to the model specification used here: 1) I use country-year rather than leader-year as the unit of analysis, aggregating multiple leaders into the indicators in country-years where a leadership change occurred. 2) My time frame 1964-2000 is much narrower than that examined by HSE. 3) I lag all right-hand side variables given concerns about MPG changing in response to conflict and the fact that I only have a single observation of MPG in a given country-year, which may occur after an MID in that year. Second, the military background of leaders may strongly covary with MPG (as well as the Weeks typology); leaders with military experience may very often bring former comrades into government with them. This may reduce the significance of the LEAD variables.

28

MPG—generated from the full model specifications shown in Tables 3 and 4. They demonstrate large

increases in the probability of fatal MID initiations as the levels of military involvement in government

increase. At 0 MPG, the predicted probability of fatal MID initiation is 3.95%, with the addition of

one military officer, it increases to 4.16% (a 5.32% increase), with two, it increases to 4.37% (a 10.63%

increase). When there are 15 military officers, the probability of fatal MID initiation more than

doubles—to 8.19%12—with the level of uncertainty around these predictions becoming substantially

greater at higher levels of MPG, given the relative rarity of military involvement in government at

these levels. For Non-security MPG, the effects are greater than with overall MPG, with one military

officer in a non-security role corresponding to a 4.47% chance of conflict initiation, two to a 4.72%

chance, and with the probability doubling at 13 officers (rather than 15).13

Figures 3 & 4: Substantive effect of MPG and Non-security MPG on fatal MID initiation

Taken together, the main analyses are strongly suggestive of a lack of support for the Military

Conservatism argument, which anticipates that higher levels of military involvement in government

12 The 95% confidence intervals around these predictions are (3.66%, 4.65%), (3.86%, 4.88%), and (5.44%, 10.93%, respectively. All predictions were calculated holding the values of the other variables in the model at their observed values in line with Hanmer and Kalkin (2013). 13 The 95% confidence intervals around these predictions are (3.93%, 5.00%), (4.14%, 5.30%), and (5.76%, 10.96%), respectively.

29

should correspond to lower levels of conflict initiation (H2).14 Neither the aggregated MPG count nor

its disaggregated security and non-security components are negatively associated with conflict

initiation at any conventional level of statistical significance. Rather, when focusing on international

conflict severe enough to produce fatalities, aggregated MPG is positively associated, and this effect

is driven primarily by non-security participation in government by the military. The positive effect for

aggregated MPG suggests support for the Military Aggression argument; however, the outsized role that

non-security military participation in government plays in this effect suggests strong support for the

Civil-Military Competition argument. When the military holds positions in the government that are

indicative of shared civil-military political power, the propensity for conflict initiation is highest.

To further adjudicate between the Military Aggression and Civil-Military Competition arguments,

an examination of their corollary hypotheses is useful. The corollary to the Military Aggression argument

is that the positive effect of MPG should be strongest in non-democracies (H1B), because of the

particular risk-acceptance of politically-active military officers in autocracies (in line with Horowitz,

Stam, and Ellis 2015). In contrast, the Civil-Military Competition argument anticipates also that the effect

of Non-security MPG should be particularly strong in regimes where there is a powerful civilian elite,

indicating heightened civil-military competition. Table 5 builds on the model specifications shown in

the main analysis in Tables 3 and 4 but interacts the MPG counts with an indicator for democracy

(the base category in Weeks’ [2012, 2014] analysis of autocratic regime type and conflict initiation). As

in the main analysis, the MPG counts are not significant when the dependent variable is all MIDS;

however, they are significant when the sample is restricted to MIDs that include fatalities. Here, the

findings do not support the corollary to the Military Aggression argument—that the positive effect of

MPG should be greatest in non-democracies. Indeed, the results in models 3 and 4 suggest the

14 H2B anticipates a particularly strong negative effect for MPG in democracies, but, as shown below in additional analysis, the opposite is true, MPG has a particularly strong positive effect in democracies.

30

opposite—that the effects of MPG and Non-security MPG, respectively, are greater in democracies. The

positive and significant coefficient for the un-interacted MPG and Non-security MPG counts in

models 3 and 4 suggest that, indeed, military participation in government exerts a positive effect on

the initiation of fatal MIDs in non-democracies. However, the positive coefficient for the MPG x

Democracy interactions suggest that this positive effect is greater, not less, in democracies. In both

models 3 and 4 the MPG count and its interaction with democracy are jointly significant at at least the

.01 level. Accordingly, neither the main hypothesis derived from the Military Aggression argument (H1)

nor its corollary (H1B) are supported. This does not mean that democracies are more conflict-prone

than non-democracies, but it does suggest that where democracies have military officers in

government—particularly in non-security roles—the positive effect that they exert on the state’s

conflict propensity is greater than that in non-democracies.

Table 5: Effect of MPG conditional on democracy

(1) (2) (3) (4) MPG Sec/Non-sec MPG Fatal: MPG Fatal: Sec/Non-sec MPG

MPG 0.001 0.042* (0.013) (0.018)

MPG x Democracy 0.007 0.062 (0.039) (0.052)

Non-security MPG 0.004 0.041** (0.013) (0.015)

Non-security MPG x Democracy 0.063 0.130** (0.048) (0.048)

Security MPG -0.018 0.047 (0.049) (0.101)

Security MPG x Democracy -0.075 -0.127 (0.084) (0.165)

Democracy 0.045 0.049 0.011 0.045 (0.115) (0.121) (0.186) (0.219)

Control variables … … … …

Constant -1.304** -1.285** -2.842** -2.833** (0.140) (0.137) (0.288) (0.271)

Observations 4,458 4,456 4,458 4,456

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Control variables not shown)

31

Turning to the corollary of the Civil-Military Competition argument, H3b anticipates that the effect of

Non-security MPG will be greatest in regimes with a powerful civilian elite—reflecting a division of

power between civilians and military officers. Table 5 shows the results from country-year analysis of

MID initiation where the MPG counts are interacted with an indicator for military regimes generated

from the Weeks regime-type data. This indicator is coded as 1 for both "junta" (institutional military

regimes) and strongman (military-personalist dictatorships) regimes identified in the Weeks data.

Regimes coded as 0 on this indicator are "machine" (party systems), boss (civilian personalist

dictatorships), other autocracies (e.g., monarchies), or democracies—regimes where there is likely a

strong civilian elite in addition to any military officers in the government.15

The interaction of the MPG counts with the military regime indicator means that the

coefficient for the MPG counts alone can be interpreted as the effect of those counts for civilian-led

regimes. The results show that for fatal MIDs, the effect of Non-security MPG when the government

has a civilian political elite is highly significant and positive. The negative sign and large coefficient on

the Non-security MPG x Military Regime interaction indicates that the effect of non-security military

involvement in government on conflict initiation is substantially less in a military regime. This does

not mean that juntas and strongman regimes are less conflict-prone, it means that the effect of

additional military officers on conflict initiation is much less in those regimes. Indeed, additional

military officers in the government may not exert a great effect on conflict propensity when the regime

is either headed by a personalist military ruler or a junta. While the results suggest that increased

15 The indicators for Weeks’ four-part autocratic regime typology are omitted from this analysis, as was the case with the analysis exploring the democracy interaction (Table 5).

32

military involvement in the non-security aspects of government in military regimes is still positively

associated with conflict initiation for fatal MIDs, it does not have a substantively large impact.16

Table 6: Effect of MPG conditional on military regime type (“juntas” and “strongmen”)

(1) (2) MIDS Fatal MIDS

Non-security MPG 0.027 0.167** (0.038) (0.048)

Non-security MPG x Military regime -0.022 -0.147** (0.040) (0.053)

Security MPG -0.054 -0.115 (0.065) (0.113)

Security MPG x Military regime 0.038 0.255 (0.085) (0.160)

Military regime -0.056 0.004 (0.182) (0.322)

Control variables ... ...

Constant -1.246** -2.798** (0.130) (0.304)

Observations 4,456 4,456

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Control variables not shown)

Taken together, the main analysis (Tables 3 and 4) and the additional analysis of the effect of

MPG conditional on regime-type (Tables 5 and 6) suggest strong support for the Civil-Military

Competition argument. Military participation in government has a strong, positive effect on the initiation

of fatal MIDs, but this effect is driven primarily by military officers taking non-security roles in

government, indicating that the military has some political power outside of an advisory role in defense

and security matters. In addition, the analysis that interacts MPG with a military regime indicator

shows that, by far, this effect is greatest in civilian-led regimes (e.g., civilian personalist regimes, one-

16 In Model 2, as the negative coefficient on the Non-security MPG x Military Regime interaction is less than that on the positive coefficient for Non-security MPG, the effect of Non-security MPG in military regimes can be understood to be positive, though much less than that in a civilian regime.

33

party states, democracies)—where military involvement in the non-security sector is truly indicative

of shared power between civilians and military officers. This also provides added confidence that the

effect for Non-security MPG is not just picking up the effect of military regimes, since the greatest

effect is found for civilian regimes.

Additional Analyses

To provide added confidence in the main findings, I explored a range of additional control variables

and model specifications. In all robustness checks, I focused on fatal MID initiation as the dependent

variable, examining three specifications for MPG—full MPG, Non-security MPG, and the

Security/Non-security MPG counts interacted with the military regime indicator—in order to ensure

that the main findings related to the Civil-Military Competition argument are supported. The full results

from these analyses are available in the appendix.

Given the relative rarity of fatal MID initiation in the data (present in 228 out of 4,456 country-

years), I reran the analysis using rare events logit (King and Zeng 2001). In this specification, none of

the findings for the MPG counts change substantively, and indeed, in most cases achieve greater

statistical significance. Second, as Figure 1 indicates, there are clear system-wide time-trends in military

participation in government. In order to ensure that these temporal trends were not an omitted factor

that biased the results, I added yearly (1964-2000) fixed effects to the analyses, which did not

substantively change the main findings.

34

Replacing the Weeks’ autocratic regime typology with similar indicators derived from the

Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2014) data also do not substantively change the result.17 Since coup risk

may also motivate state leaders to pursue aggressive foreign policies (e.g., Goemans and Chiozza

2011), and coup risk is likely associated with higher levels of military involvement in government, I

include a counter for the number of years since the state last experienced a coup attempt. This was

derived from Powell and Thyne’s (2011) data. This also did not substantively alter the main findings.

To ensure that the effect of the MPG counts was not merely picking up the effect of overall

cabinet/state council size, I included the count of the total number of cabinet- or state council-level

officials in the government (civilians and military). In the specifications with MPG disaggregated into

its security and non-security components, the overall count of the number of officials in government

was similarly disaggregated. Limiting the MPG counts to only active-duty military officers also did not

substantively change the results. This, and the relative rarity of retired officers in the data,18 suggests

that the trends observed in the main analyses are driven primarily by the participation of active-duty

military officers in the government. In order to ensure that the results were not driven by extreme

values on the MPG counts, I also generated the natural log of all MPG counts and reran the analyses

with these measures; this also did not change the main findings.

Another potential concern in the analyses is endogeneity. Specifically, the anticipation of

international conflict by the government may both contribute to a state’s propensity to actually initiate

17 Here, the Weeks’ “Junta” indicator was replaced with an indicator coded as “1” if the regime was coded as “military” or “indirect military rule” in the GWF data. The “Strongman” indicator was replaced with an indicator for “military-personalist” regime in the GWF data. The “Party” and “Personal” (civilian) GWF indicators replaced Weeks’ “Machine” and “Boss” indicators, respectively. Weeks’ “Other Nondemocracies” indicator was replaced with one coded as “1” for monarchies and all other non-democratic regimes in the GWF data. For the interaction of the MPG counts with a military regime indicator I used GWF’s indicator for military regime (including “military,” “military-personalist”, and “indirect military” regimes), and coded another “1” for any non-military, non-democratic regime. In all specifications, GWF’s coding of democracy was the base category. Weeks’ indicator for “New/Unstable Regime” was replaced with an indicator coded as “1” if the regime was no more than five years old in the GWF data. 18 As discussed in the research design, “retired” does not merely capture former military experience, it captures an individual having spent enough time in the military to have achieved sufficient rank and or enough years of service to qualify to officially “retire” rather than merely be discharged after a term of service.

35

conflict and also to bring more military officers into the government. This should not be a major

concern in the analyses here for several reasons: 1) Existing literature on coups (e.g., Talmadge and

Piplani 2015) and on civilian control of the military more generally (e.g., Desch 1999; White

[forthcoming]) has demonstrated that the effect of international conflict on military involvement in

politics is negative—the opposite of that presented here. Given this, any potential bias should set a

higher bar for finding a statistically significant positive association for MPG, with the risk being a Type

2 (Failing to reject the null hypothesis when it should be rejected) rather than a Type 1 error (Rejecting

the null hypothesis when it should not be) in the hypothesis testing. 2) Non-security MPG exerts the

strongest impact on international conflict initiation. If the anticipation of international conflict by the

government was driving both increased MPG and conflict initiation, we would expect to see this bias

played out most clearly in Security MPG—i.e., if military intrusion into government increases in

anticipation of conflict, we would expect to see this first in defense-focused government positions,

such as the ministry of defense or a national security advisor. 3) The analyses include controls that

should proxy for the anticipation of international conflict, including the “peace years” since the last

MID initiation and the cumulative number of MIDs in which the state has been involved since 1946.

Finally, in addition to the country-year analysis, I examined the results of directed-dyad analysis

to provide controls for the relationship and relative strength of the states involved in the MID. In

addition to the variables from the country-year analysis, the directed dyad analysis included additional

controls for the dyadic relationship—which follow from Weeks (2012, 338). These include whether

the target state was a democracy, the target state's CINC score, the proportion of the dyad's CINC

score that was held by the initiating state, the geographic contiguity of the dyad, the distance between

the two states, similarity of each state in the dyad's alliances, each state's affinity with the United States

as measured by alliance similarity, and the degree to which the states in the dyad were dependent on

each other for trade. In addition, I included indicators for the great power status of the states in the

36

dyad.19 The results from this approach are available in the appendix and did not yield results that are

substantively different from the main findings shown in Tables 3-6. The aggregated MPG count is

significant when the dependent variable is the initiation of a MID that results in fatalities and this

result is driven primarily by non-security military participation in government, and the effect of non-

security MPG is greatest in civilian-led regimes.

Conclusion

The results presented here provide strong support for the Civil-Military Competition argument. Military

participation in government in non-security areas is strongly associated with the initiation of violent

international conflict. Military ministers of defense or national security advisers do not significantly

increase a state’s conflict propensity, rather it is when military officers occupy positions of more

general leadership in the government, that they increase conflict propensity. When military officers

occupy these types of positions, it can be indicative of unclear decision-making authority between the

civilian and military positions of the government. Where there is competition between civilians and

military officers or a divergence of preferences, information-sharing can also suffer. In line with this

logic, in regimes with a strong civilian elite—e.g., one-party regimes, civilian personalist dictatorships,

and democracies—the positive effect of military officers in a non-security role on conflict initiation is

much greater.

This suggests that military involvement in government has a strong effect on a state’s conflict

propensity, but it is not some inherent trait of military officers that exerts an effect on conflict, rather

it is institutional arrangements in civil-military relations that matter. First, there is no evidence in

19 Specifically, whether both states were major powers, whether the initiating state was a major power and the target minor, and whether the initiator a minor power and the target a major power—with a minor-minor dyad being the base category.

37

support of the Military Conservatism argument—no aspect of military involvement in government is

negatively and significantly associated with conflict initiation. And while the aggregated Military

Participation in Government (MPG) count is positive and significant, this effect appears to be largely

driven by non-security military participation in government. Were the Military Aggression argument—

that military officers tend to favor military solutions to foreign policy problems and this can increase

a state’s conflict propensity where they are in government—supported, it is not clear why they would

not exert an effect when they occupy security roles in a government. Further, the effect of MPG is

greater, not less, in democracies. Existing research on leaders (HSE 2015) suggests that the personal

traits that may predispose military officers to be more aggressive in international relations and favor

armed conflict will be more evident among those that rise to power in non-democratic settings. Yet,

this does not seem to extend to military officers in government positions short of the state leader.

Instead, the effect of MPG is greater in democracies—a civilian-led regime-type, which is again

suggestive of support for the Civil-Military Competition argument: shared civilian and military political

power leads to poor deliberation and decision-making, which corresponds to a greater tendency to

initiate international conflict.

These findings give us a much greater understanding of the role that militaries can play in

governments and in foreign policy decision-making. In between civilian- and military-dominated

regimes, there is a spectrum of military involvement in government and politics, and in this spectrum,

there is the potential for substantially increased conflict propensity. There is important variation within

non-military governments in the role that the military plays. Civilian-led regimes that are only partially

civilianized, such as Egypt’s in 1967 or Pakistan’s in 1999, can find that the presence of military officers

in their governments increases their tendency to choose conflict over peace. This is not because the

military officers are inherently aggressive, but because shared power and potential competition

between civilian and military elites lends itself to poor decision-making (Brooks 2008).

38

There are a number of policy and scholarly implications to be derived from the argument and

analyses presented in this article. Much has been written about the substantial role that military officers

play in the Trump Administration and whether this will correspond to a greater likelihood for the

United States to initiate international conflict.20 While it is difficult to extrapolate to a specific case

from the results presented here, they do suggest that on average, military officers in a security role do

not increase a country’s belligerence in international relations, and in the Trump Administration,

military officers occupy primarily security roles.21 The Civil-Military Competition argument focuses on

shared political power and the pathologies that emerge from that institutional arrangement. While

generals are taking an outsized role in the Trump Administration in advising and implementing

security policy, there is no evidence that they share or compete over political power, suggesting that

the presence of generals in and of itself should not lead to increased conflict propensity on the part

of the United States.

Outside of the United States, a key takeaway is that civilian-led regimes should not be judged

as being inherently pacific without examining the role that the military plays in such settings. While

democracies and single-party states tend to, on average, be less conflict prone (e.g., Weeks 2012, 2014),

the results here suggest when these regimes incorporate a substantial military presence in the

government outside of a purely security role, they tend to exhibit more conflict prone behavior than

civilian-led regimes without such civil-military pathologies. In contrast, military-led regimes do not

20 See, for example, Greg Jaffe and Greg Miller. 12/9/2016. “Trump’s generals, hardened by war, see militant Islam, Iran as dire dangers.” The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trumps-generals-hardened-by-war-see-militant-islam-iran-as-dire-dangers/2016/12/09/17f849a0-bd8d-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.98a2c1aec93f. Accessed 4/11/2017; William D. Hartung. 3/6/2017. “Trump’s Obsession With Generals Could Send Us Straight Into War With Iran.” The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-obsession-with-generals-could-send-us-straight-into-war-with-iran/. Accessed 4/11/2017. 21 Specifically, the Minister of Defense, National Security Adviser, the Chief of Staff of the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Homeland Security are all recently retired three- and four-star Army and Marine generals.

39

become substantially more belligerent as the size of the military contingent in the government

increases.

Future research should move beyond military participation in government in relation to regime

type to focus on the leader-military interaction. While leader variables are included as controls, the

argument and analyses here do not fully tap into the rich literature and data on leader attributes and

background. Currently, the MPG data is a country-year dataset—with one observation per country

per year. Future data collection may seek to disaggregate this into leader-year or cabinet/council-year

to capture changes that individual leaders make to the military representation in their governments as

they take office, or capture multiple changes that may occur in a given year. For testing theories on

how leaders’ military background interacts with that of their advisers, future research should augment

the existing MPG data to capture the professional background of military officers in government. Are

they “professional” officers who have followed conventional career trajectories, or are they “cronies”

of the leader who have risen through political favor? This is important variation to uncover,

particularly as scholars seek to understand how the presence of military officers in the government

may exacerbate or ameliorate a leader’s conflict propensity.

40

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Appendix

Table A1: Directed Dyad Analysis

MPG Sec/Non-sec MPG

Interaction w/Military regime

MPG 0.076** (0.020)

Security MPG 0.027 -0.028 (0.079) (0.117)

Non-security MPG 0.084** 0.178** (0.021) (0.061)

Non-security MPG x Military Regime -0.130+ (0.070)

Security MPG x Military Regime 0.181 (0.147)

Military Regime -0.441 (0.461)

Civilian Non-democracy -0.370 (0.328)

Junta regime -0.741+ -0.713+ (0.420) (0.425)

Strongman regime -1.148* -1.153* (0.472) (0.481)

Machine regime 0.260 0.300 (0.428) (0.435)

Boss regime -0.023 0.009 (0.397) (0.394)

Other non-democracy -0.260 -0.238 (0.295) (0.302)

New|unstable regime 0.040 0.043 -0.042 (0.214) (0.214) (0.238)

Leader combat 0.134 0.122 0.091 (0.301) (0.301) (0.353)

Leader non-combat 0.434+ 0.430 0.284 (0.260) (0.262) (0.306)

Leader rebel 0.315 0.329 0.414+ (0.219) (0.221) (0.232)

Civil War 0.538* 0.548* 0.654* (0.254) (0.259) (0.278)

Cumulative MIDs 0.131** 0.132** 0.147** (0.032) (0.032) (0.033)

State 2 Democracy 0.020 0.016 -0.050 (0.285) (0.285) (0.304)

Initiator CINC 9.836 9.735 6.997 (8.086) (7.967) (7.726)

Target CINC 14.032 13.971 11.955 (9.745) (9.761) (8.326)

Initiator Share of Capabilities 0.072 0.100 -0.088 (0.388) (0.392) (0.392)

46

dependlow -106.542*

-107.527* -110.321*

(46.890) (46.956) (55.023) Major-Major Power Dyad -2.206 -2.161 -1.414

(1.790) (1.770) (1.572) Minor-Major Dyad -1.533 -1.519 -1.163

(1.335) (1.335) (1.116) Major-Minor Dyad -1.089 -1.070 -0.627

(1.044) (1.033) (0.988) Contiguous Dyad 4.297** 4.315** 4.125**

(0.604) (0.600) (0.657) Distance between Capitals (log) -0.200** -0.199** -0.201**

(0.063) (0.063) (0.069) Alliance Portfolio Similarity -0.737+ -0.740+ -0.645

(0.409) (0.411) (0.443) Initiator Alliance Similarity with United

States 0.134 0.161 -0.428

(0.793) (0.799) (0.849) Target Alliance Similarity with United States 0.564 0.616 0.928

(0.908) (0.914) (0.922) Peace Years -0.283** -0.285** -0.257**

(0.057) (0.058) (0.063) Constant -7.115** -7.166** -6.744**

(0.813) (0.812) (0.879)

Observations 580,036 579,773 520,480

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Polynomial of peace-years not shown)

47

Table A2: MPG Limited to Active Duty Officers

Full MPG Sec/Non-sec MPG Interaction w/Military regime

MPG 0.058** (0.015)

Security MPG 0.025 -0.112 (0.088) (0.116)

Non-security MPG 0.062** 0.168** (0.015) (0.047)

Non-security MPG x Military Regime -0.145** (0.052)

Security MPG x Military Regime 0.256 (0.163)

Military Regime -0.017 (0.318)

Civilian Non-democracy 0.004 (0.199)

Junta regime -0.745* -0.740* (0.355) (0.356)

Strongman regime 0.133 0.157 (0.275) (0.279)

Machine regime -0.580+ -0.551+ (0.309) (0.325)

Boss regime 0.004 0.029 (0.237) (0.256)

Other non-democracy -0.034 -0.017 (0.260) (0.270)

New|unstable regime 0.134 0.137 0.008 (0.231) (0.231) (0.204)

Leader combat 0.169 0.163 0.067 (0.216) (0.212) (0.220)

Leader non-combat 0.028 0.033 -0.071 (0.223) (0.224) (0.211)

Leader rebel 0.164 0.167 0.156 (0.166) (0.166) (0.166)

Major power 0.076 0.075 0.131 (0.185) (0.182) (0.170)

Civil war 0.249 0.248 0.281 (0.187) (0.188) (0.180)

Cumulative MIDs 0.043** 0.043** 0.047** (0.009) (0.009) (0.010)

CINC 2.100 2.084 0.542 (1.830) (1.812) (1.296)

Peace years -0.068 -0.068 -0.076 (0.051) (0.051) (0.048)

Constant -2.813** -2.807** -2.798** (0.295) (0.293) (0.302)

Observations 4,273 4,271 4,456

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1(two-tailed) (Polynomial of peace-years not shown)

48

Table A3: Controlling for the Size of the Government (e.g,. Cabinet, State Council)

Full MPG Sec/Non-sec MPG Interaction w/Military regime

MPG 0.054** (0.015)

Government Size 0.003 (0.005)

Security MPG -0.014 -0.127 (0.090) (0.120)

Security Government Size 0.054 0.028 (0.051) (0.050)

Non-security MPG 0.064** 0.169** (0.017) (0.049)

Non-security Government Size 0.002 -0.001 (0.006) (0.006)

Non-security MPG x Military Regime -0.146** (0.052)

Security MPG x Military Regime 0.246 (0.155)

Military Regime 0.016 (0.339)

Civilian Non-democracy 0.014 (0.216)

Junta regime -0.744* -0.747* (0.361) (0.361)

Strongman regime 0.115 0.146 (0.289) (0.289)

Machine regime -0.682 -0.623 (0.440) (0.464)

Boss regime -0.040 0.021 (0.233) (0.248)

Other non-democracy -0.059 -0.046 (0.268) (0.275)

New|unstable regime 0.129 0.144 0.001 (0.231) (0.229) (0.205)

Leader combat 0.171 0.170 0.064 (0.214) (0.215) (0.224)

Leader non-combat 0.036 0.048 -0.075 (0.226) (0.229) (0.215)

Leader rebel 0.164 0.185 0.163 (0.169) (0.173) (0.170)

Major power 0.098 -0.005 0.080 (0.176) (0.212) (0.191)

Civil war 0.255 0.259 0.287 (0.186) (0.185) (0.180)

Cumulative MIDs 0.042** 0.041** 0.046** (0.010) (0.010) (0.010)

CINC 1.616 2.489 1.112 (1.765) (2.034) (2.256)

Peace years -0.069 -0.071 -0.079 (0.051) (0.051) (0.050)

49

Constant -2.858** -3.037** -2.895** (0.287) (0.323) (0.335)

Observations 4,273 4,271 4,456

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Polynomial of peace-years not shown)

50

Table A4: GWF Regime Type Indicators

Full MPG Sec/Non-sec MPG Interaction w/Military regime

MPG 0.050** (0.016)

Security MPG 0.007 -0.028 (0.082) (0.100)

Non-security MPG 0.055** 0.093** (0.013) (0.019)

Non-security MPG x Military Regime -0.019 (0.160)

Non-security MPG x Military Regime -0.067** (0.022)

Military Regime (GWF) 0.557 (0.433)

Civilian Non-democracy (GWF) 0.215 (0.175)

Military institutional regime (GWF) -0.272 -0.275 (0.346) (0.350)

Military-personal regime (GWF) 0.461 0.494 (0.463) (0.476)

Party regime (GWF) 0.024 0.057 (0.177) (0.187)

Personalist regime (GWF) -0.163 -0.134 (0.249) (0.248)

Other non-democracy (GWF) 0.801** 0.809** (0.227) (0.229)

New regime (GWF) 0.238+ 0.244+ 0.146 (0.127) (0.125) (0.130)

Leader combat -0.031 -0.039 -0.018 (0.190) (0.187) (0.188)

Leader non-combat -0.187 -0.179 -0.225 (0.171) (0.170) (0.160)

Leader rebel 0.338* 0.341* 0.117 (0.153) (0.152) (0.169)

Major power 0.081 0.081 0.048 (0.238) (0.232) (0.262)

Civil war 0.202 0.198 0.210 (0.174) (0.175) (0.174)

Cumulative MIDs 0.048** 0.049** 0.047** (0.008) (0.008) (0.008)

CINC 1.116 1.090 0.727 (1.952) (1.895) (1.895)

Peace-years -0.110** -0.110** -0.115** (0.041) (0.041) (0.041)

Constant -2.948** -2.942** -2.824** (0.267) (0.266) (0.247)

Observations 5,029 5,027 5,027

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Polynomial of peace-years not shown)

51

Table A5: Using Natural Log of MPG Counts

Full MPG Sec/Non-sec MPG Interaction w/Military regime

Log MPG 0.193+ (0.112)

Log Security MPG -0.123 -0.245 (0.186) (0.229)

Log Non-security MPG 0.366** 0.476* (0.095) (0.193)

Non-security Log MPG x Military Regime -0.353 (0.273)

Security Log MPG x Military Regime 0.483 (0.380)

Military Regime 0.005 (0.332)

Civilian Non-democracy 0.027 (0.205)

Junta regime -0.482 -0.592+ (0.334) (0.331)

Strongman regime 0.208 0.192 (0.274) (0.278)

Machine regime -0.578+ -0.461 (0.322) (0.331)

Boss regime 0.011 0.116 (0.246) (0.262)

Other non-democracy -0.037 0.045 (0.261) (0.269)

New|unstable regime 0.109 0.112 0.009 (0.231) (0.229) (0.203)

Leader combat 0.198 0.156 0.090 (0.213) (0.215) (0.222)

Leader non-combat 0.025 0.032 -0.057 (0.220) (0.214) (0.207)

Leader rebel 0.081 0.087 0.110 (0.171) (0.163) (0.169)

Major power 0.101 0.102 0.119 (0.190) (0.169) (0.175)

Civil war 0.280 0.273 0.283 (0.183) (0.181) (0.182)

Cumulative MIDs 0.042** 0.046** 0.048** (0.009) (0.010) (0.010)

CINC 1.911 1.783 0.483 (1.888) (1.786) (1.370)

Peace Years -0.071 -0.068 -0.078 (0.051) (0.051) (0.049)

Constant -2.813** -2.840** -2.813** (0.300) (0.298) (0.305)

Observations 4,273 4,271 4,456

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Polynomial of peace-years not shown)

52

Table A6: Rare Events Logit

Full MPG Sec/Non-sec MPG Interaction w/Military regime

MPG 0.056** (0.015)

Security MPG 0.026 -0.109 (0.086) (0.112)

Non-security MPG 0.060** 0.170** (0.015) (0.048)

Non-security MPG x Military Regime -0.148** (0.053)

Security MPG x Military Regime 0.254 (0.160)

Military Regime 0.001 (0.321)

Civilian Non-democracy 0.006 (0.198)

Junta regime -0.686* -0.682+ (0.349) (0.350)

Strongman regime 0.144 0.167 (0.273) (0.275)

Machine regime -0.544+ -0.516 (0.307) (0.322)

Boss regime 0.022 0.045 (0.234) (0.251)

Other non-democracy -0.030 -0.013 (0.257) (0.267)

New|unstable regime 0.139 0.144 0.012 (0.230) (0.231) (0.204)

Leader combat 0.171 0.165 0.072 (0.215) (0.212) (0.219)

Leader non-combat 0.040 0.045 -0.063 (0.222) (0.223) (0.212)

Leader rebel 0.157 0.160 0.148 (0.166) (0.166) (0.166)

Major power 0.114 0.111 0.168 (0.180) (0.180) (0.171)

Civil war 0.256 0.254 0.293 (0.186) (0.187) (0.181)

Cumulative MIDs 0.043** 0.043** 0.047** (0.009) (0.009) (0.010)

CINC 1.990 1.977 0.505 (1.819) (1.800) (1.298)

Peace-years -0.067 -0.067 -0.076 (0.051) (0.051) (0.049)

Constant -2.788** -2.781** -2.778** (0.294) (0.292) (0.303)

Observations 4,273 4,271 4,456

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Polynomial of peace-years not shown)

53

Table A7: Yearly Fixed Effects

Full MPG Sec/Non-sec MPG Interaction w/Military regime

MPG 0.067** (0.015)

Security MPG 0.017 -0.108 (0.084) (0.110)

Non-security MPG 0.074** 0.169** (0.015) (0.051)

Non-security MPG x Military Regime -0.132* (0.055)

Security MPG x Military Regime 0.234 (0.161)

Military Regime -0.064 (0.342)

Civilian Non-democracy 0.008 (0.217)

Junta regime -0.785* -0.780* (0.347) (0.347)

Strongman regime 0.078 0.109 (0.304) (0.310)

Machine regime -0.506+ -0.463 (0.299) (0.310)

Boss regime -0.004 0.035 (0.262) (0.280)

Other non-democracy -0.041 -0.013 (0.282) (0.291)

New|unstable regime 0.161 0.172 0.034 (0.255) (0.258) (0.226)

Leader combat 0.049 0.039 -0.067 (0.214) (0.211) (0.220)

Leader non-combat -0.060 -0.053 -0.160 (0.236) (0.238) (0.226)

Leader rebel 0.124 0.128 0.136 (0.165) (0.164) (0.165)

Major power 0.128 0.126 0.177 (0.177) (0.175) (0.175)

Civil war 0.362+ 0.359+ 0.394* (0.192) (0.194) (0.184)

Cumulative MIDs 0.068** 0.069** 0.073** (0.011) (0.012) (0.011)

CINC -0.993 -1.107 -2.337 (1.806) (1.779) (1.537)

Peace-years -0.072 -0.072 -0.082 (0.053) (0.054) (0.050)

Constant -2.125** -2.119** -2.110** (0.461) (0.461) (0.458)

Observations 4,273 4,271 4,456

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)

(Polynomial of peace-years and year fixed effects not shown)

54

Table A8: Controlling for Recent Coup Attempts

Full MPG Sec/Non-sec MPG Interaction w/Military regime

MPG 0.054** (0.015)

Security MPG 0.015 -0.122 (0.087) (0.113)

Non-security MPG 0.060** 0.162** (0.015) (0.048)

Non-security MPG x Military Regime -0.142** (0.053)

Security MPG x Military Regime 0.262 (0.161)

Military Regime -0.040 (0.326)

Civilian Non-democracy 0.011 (0.199)

Junta regime -0.753* -0.755* (0.354) (0.354)

Strongman regime 0.108 0.129 (0.274) (0.276)

Machine regime -0.558+ -0.523 (0.308) (0.322)

Boss regime 0.009 0.037 (0.237) (0.254)

Other non-democracy -0.046 -0.026 (0.259) (0.268)

New|unstable regime 0.112 0.116 -0.013 (0.233) (0.234) (0.205)

Leader combat 0.165 0.159 0.061 (0.215) (0.213) (0.222)

Leader non-combat 0.008 0.011 -0.091 (0.229) (0.230) (0.220)

Leader rebel 0.149 0.153 0.151 (0.166) (0.166) (0.166)

Major power 0.091 0.088 0.142 (0.194) (0.193) (0.180)

Civil war 0.249 0.246 0.283 (0.186) (0.187) (0.182)

Cumulative MIDs 0.044** 0.045** 0.048** (0.009) (0.009) (0.009)

CINC 2.079 2.059 0.614 (1.891) (1.872) (1.339)

Years since coup attempt -0.004 -0.004 -0.003 (0.006) (0.006) (0.006)

Peace years -0.068 -0.068 -0.077 (0.051) (0.051) (0.049)

Constant -2.736** -2.720** -2.729** (0.329) (0.322) (0.339)

Observations 4,273 4,271 4,456

Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 (two-tailed)