The effect of declining military influence on defense budgets in latin America

Armed Forces and Society

Volumn 26, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 437-449

  Looney, Robert E ^a   Frederiksen, Peter C ^a  

^a NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039004480     PISSN: 0095327X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X0002600305     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Central and South America.
2. United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, annual issues).
3. Kim Hill, "Domestic Politics, International Linkages, and Military Expenditures," Studies in Comparative International Development 13 (1978): 53. This paper provides an excellent summary of the literature up to 1978.
4. See Michael K. O'Leary and William D. Collin, Quantitative Techniques in Foreign Policy Analysis and Forecasting (New York: Praeger, 1975).
5. Arthur H. Westing, "Military Expenditures and Their Reduction," Bulletin of Peace Proposals 9 (1978): 24-29.
6. John M. Treddenick, "The Arms Race and Military Keynesianism," Canadian Public Policy 11 (1985): 78.
7. Alfred Maizels and Machiko Nissanke, "The Determinants of Military Expenditures in Developing Countries," World Development 14 (1986): 1125-1140.
8. Geoffrey Harris, "The Determinants of Defence Expenditure in the ASEAN Region," Journal of Peace Research 23 (1986): 41-49.
9. Robert E. Looney, "Military Expenditures in Latin America: Patterns of Budgetary Tradeoffs," Journal of Economic Development 11 (1986): 69-103.
10. Robert E. Looney and Peter C. Frederiksen, "Economic Determinants of Latin American Defense Expenditures," Armed Forces and Society 14 (1988): pp. 459-471.
11. Robert E. Looney and Peter C. Frederiksen, "The Economic Determinants of Military Expenditure in Selected East Asian Countries," Contemporary Southeast Asia 11 (1990): 265-277.
12. Robert E. Looney and Peter C. Frederiksen, "Defense Expenditures and Budgetary Patterns in Selected Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Countries: An Assessment," Public Budgeting and Financial Management 8 (1996): 93-105.
13. A distributed lag function recognizes the impact of past values of for example defense spending on today's defense spending level. A distributed lag function indicates how many historical defense levels affect today level and assigns a weight to indicate the strength - presumably the more recent having the higher weight, i.e. greater influence.
14. N. Hicks and A. Kubisch, "Cutting Government Expenditures in LDCs," Finance and Development 21 (1984): 37-39.
15. Patrice Franko, "De Facto Demilitarization: Budget-Driven Downsizing in Latin America," Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 36 (1994): 37-52.
16. 2 value.
17. However, even this first difference procedure will mask any long-term restoration of a stable relationship between the defense burden and the independent variables if one exists.
18. C. W. J. Granger, "Some Properties of Time Series Data and Their Use in Econometric Specification," Journal of Econometrics 16 (1981): 121-130.
19. R. F. Engle and C. W. J. Granger, "Co-integration and Error Correction: Representation, Estimating and Testing," Econometrica 55 (1987): 251-276.
20. Robert E. Looney, "Defense Expenditures and Macroeconomic Stabilization in Pakistan: A Test of the Military Keynesianism Hypothesis," Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Economiche e Commerciali 45 (1998): 599-613.
21. R. Putnam, "Toward Explaining Military Intervention in Latin American Politics," World Politics 20 (1967): 87-106.
22. R. H. Dix, "Military Coups and Military Rule in Latin America," Armed Forces & Society 20 (1994): 439-456.
23. This score is by necessity judgmental.
24. Haiti was included as it shares an island with the Dominican Republic. Currently Haiti has no military.
25. Data in Table 1 were derived from Dix, "Military Coups" for the period 1970 to 1991. In order to lengthen the period under study, we asked Professors Tom Bruneau, Maria Rasmussen, and Scott Tollefson (Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California) to estimate the index for the period 1991 to 1997. The authors used these estimates for the last six years.
26. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for this observation.
27. For a technical description of the error correction model, see Looney, "Defense Expenditures and Macroeconomic Stabilization," 604-605.
28. See note 12 above for a description a lagged values and functions.
29. For Argentina we defined the regional defense variable as the Brazilian MII. For Brazil and Chile we used average military influence as a whole. For all other countries, the regional defense variable was calculated as the average defense burden for the region. This formulation was suggested by our earlier study, Robert Looney and Peter C. Frederiksen, "Economic Determinants of Latin American Defense Expenditures"; see also Robert E. Looney and P.C. Frederiksen "The Future Demand for Military Expenditure in Argentina," Arms Control (1986): 197-204.
30. For Argentina we defined the regional defense variable as the Brazilian MII. For Brazil and Chile we used average military influence as a whole. For all other countries, the regional defense variable was calculated as the average defense burden for the region. This formulation was suggested by our earlier study, Robert Looney and Peter C. Frederiksen, "Economic Determinants of Latin American Defense Expenditures"; see also Robert E. Looney and P.C. Frederiksen "The Future Demand for Military Expenditure in Argentina," Arms Control (1986): 197-204.
31. The model also provides an objective means to identify the optimal lag structure (influence of past variables) between shocks in the independent variables and how these shocks are carried over into future budget decisions. To identify this lag structure, we used the procedure developed in M.H. Pearsan and B. Pearsan, Microfit 4.0: Interactive Econometric Analysis (Cambridge: Camfit Dats Ltd. 1997).
32. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, World Development Indicators 1997 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1997).
33. All defense data from U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Expenditures. We recognize the fact that in many cases defense budgets between the countries are not directly comparable as they may contain different elements. However, since we are using ACDA time-series data, we assume the definitional differences are constant and carried forward over the time period we are looking at, inasmuch we feel that the data are comparable over time.
34. The complete set of regression equations can be obtained from the authors on request.