Bread, Butter, Barricade: Military Economic Involvement, Grievances and Mutinies

• In Event: Elites under Fire: Assassinations, Mutiny and Leadership Change

Abstract

Military involvement in the economy is a crucial, though understudied, aspect of civil-military relations. Recent literature suggests military involvement in the economy helps political leaders survive in office by tying the economic interest of the army’s upper echelons to regime stability. However, the impacts of these economic ventures on the rank-and-file and on military cohesion has not been examined. We argue that military economic involvement decreases the risk of mutinies by creating rent-seeking behavior on the part of soldiers. Economic involvement provides soldiers with jobs, benefits and off-book revenues that are not available to civilians (tax breaks, subsidies, favorable contracts....). Soldiers are not willing to lose this preferential access through open revolt, and military elites can use these resources to ameliorate economic grievances in the lower ranks. Using cross-national, original data on military involvement in the economy and information on about 2,500 military-run firms, we show that militaries with a stake in the economy and with higher number of firms are less likely to experience mutinies than countries with no military economic involvement and with fewer firms. However, when mutinies do occur in countries where militaries are involved in the economy, these mutinies tend to have more participants, and to last longer.

Authors

• Roya Izadi, University of Rhode Island

• Lindsey Pruett, Louisiana State University