Forces for Change: Cross-Temporal Patterns in Countries’ Security Apparatuses

• In Event: Innovations in the Study of Militaries and International Conflict

Abstract

How durable is security institutional design in developing countries? When and why might countries change their security apparatus, including the number and nature of their regular and irregular forces and the organizational oversight of these forces? A large literature in international relations and comparative politics views security force design through the lenses of coup-proofing and counter-balancing, suggesting that countries’ security force profiles change—and, specifically, individual irregular forces proliferate— if leaders fear a challenge by powerful elites. This perspective thus views change as determined by domestic processes. Domestic politics undoubtedly affects security force design, but we suggest that the international context might also play an important role. In particular, countries might adjust their security apparatus in response to broad international conditions (the end of the cold war, 9/11) and new alliances and patronage relations. Our study sheds light on how durable or changing countries’ security apparatus is and the relative role of international versus domestic determinants of change.

We examine these questions using a new Domestic Security Institutions (DSI) dataset, which provides cross-temporal data on the size, composition, and oversight of military and paramilitary forces in 110 countries from 1980 to 2017. Military Balance data, which is produced by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, has served as the standard data source for analysis of state militaries. However, due to the difficulty of providing contemporaneous reporting on security forces, this data contains shortcomings that limit its usefulness for purposes of cross-temporal analysis, including errors in the reporting of force sizes and missing information on forces. Building off of the Military Balance data, as well as the State Security Force Dataset (De Bruin 2021), the DSI dataset provides newly cleaned and reliable data to examine over-time patterns in (developing) countries’ security forces across a series of indicators.

Authors

• Leonardo R. Arriola, University of California, Berkeley

• Katherine M. Beall, Wellesley College

• Aila M. Matanock, University of California-Berkeley

• Michaela Mattes, UC-Berkeley

• John Eric Salchak, University of California, Berkeley