Are Democracies the Better Allies? The Impact of Regime Type on Military Coalition Operations

Abstract

This study asks which attributes make states the more valuable partners in military coalition operations. Due to the uncertainty inherent in combat in general and coalition operations in particular, successful military cooperation depends on the amount of discretion given to national armed forces. Since democracies usually have more harmonious civil-military relations, restricting the discretion of military agents is a relatively less attractive and needed tool for democratic principals. This in turn makes democratic states the more valuable allies. The argument has two empirical implications: On one hand, a state conducting a military intervention should be more likely to build a coalition with its allies, the more democratic allies it has. On the other hand, military interventions by democratic military coalitions should end more quickly with success for the interveners than interventions by nondemocratic coalitions. These hypotheses are tested and supported using data on military interventions between 1946 and 2001.

Do Democracies Engage Less in Coup-Proofing? On the Relationship between Regime Type and Civil-Military Relations1

“…We argue that nondemocratic leaders experience higher benefits and lower costs from implementing ex‐ante instruments and instead enjoy lower benefits from ex‐post instruments than democratic leaders. The former therefore are likely to depend less on monitoring and sanctioning instruments, and tend to exert influence on their military agents by implementing institutional coup‐proofing (see Pilster 2011:58–60). First, the expected benefits from institutional coup‐proofing are likely to be higher in nondemocratic regimes as these are more likely to experience agency drift in its most radical sense, that is, the military agent trying to overthrow the principal via a coup.…”

Political Leadership Changes and the Withdrawal from Military Coalition Operations, 1946-2001

“…First, this paper adds to the growing literature on the effects of political leadership changes on foreign security policies, such as war initiation and continuation (for example, Stanley ; Stanley and Sawyer ; Croco ). Second, our research bears relevance for the literature on states' security commitments (Gartzke and Gleditsch ; see Pilster ). For example, we analyzed participations in various kinds of military coalitions by a more diverse set of states, which generalizes Tago's study () on the withdrawals from the coalition in Iraq between 2003 and 2006.…”

“…We do so by further developing existing theoretical arguments (Stanley ; Stanley and Sawyer ) and testing the corresponding theoretical framework for the case of military coalition operations. Second, we also want to broaden the empirical range of the debate concerning the reliability of security commitments (for example, Leeds ; Gartzke and Gleditsch ; Pilster ). So far, the vast majority of research in this domain focuses on the performance of alliances in interstate wars—a topic of possibly declining policy relevance, primarily because these kinds of conflict have substantially decreased in frequency since World War II (Buhaug, Gates, Hegre, and Strand ).…”

“…This anecdotal evidence points to the impact of political leadership turnover on foreign policy decision making in general and on the reliability of states' commitments to military coalition operations in particular. Surprisingly, however, while there is a growing literature on the origins and conduct of such multilateral military interventions (Tago , , ; Kreps ; Morey ; Pilster ; Tierney ; Vucetic ), the scholarly literature lacks systematic theorizing and empirical evidence that may improve our understanding of how leadership turnover is in fact related to early withdrawals from military coalitions.…”

More Unstable Internally, More Reliable Externally: South Korea’s Participation in the Vietnam War

“…Developing the thesis of democratic peace that there is no war between democracies, some scholars argue that democracies are reliable alliance partners due to their transparency of decision-making, stable civil-military relation, audience cost, and professional and depoliticized soldiers (Siverson and Emmons 1991;Lake 1992;Choi 2003;Lipson 2003;Pilster 2011). They provide some, if not strong, evidence about the positive relations between democracy and war victory (Reiter and Stam 2002), about democracy and alliance commitment (Choi 2004(Choi , 2012.…”