Performance and Instability in Military and Nonmilitary Regime Systems

Abstract

The analysis of military regimes, as opposed to military coups, has attracted comparatively little attention. This paper examines whether the political, military, and economic performance of systems which have experienced a military regime differs from the performance of systems which have not. The comparison between the performance of these two types of system is then used to examine the validity of the occurrence of a military regime as an indicator of instability. The population consists of all independent countries of the world. The time span examined is 1961–70. The comparison is made across a number of political, military, and economic variables. The basic comparison is elaborated by introducing controls for GNP, area, number of coups, and duration of the military regime. While the controls show a number of variations, the main summary finding is that it is easy to differentiate military and non-military regime systems in political terms, but not in military and economic terms. This finding seriously questions the utility of the occurrence of a military regime as an indicator of instability.