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3.1 CONTRIBUTIONS

Political survival is most connected to the study of interstate conflict in the diversionary literature. Diversionary theory purports that leaders will sometimes use foreign conflict for the purpose of improving their domestic standing. Dozens of studies have assessed the theory, though results have frequently been inconsistent or even contradictory (Meernik and Waterman 1996). Any inconsistencies could potentially be explained when one considers how little effort has been taken to distinguish how likely a leader is to actually lose power. In the context of democracies, of course, leaders that are managing a poorly performing economy or are otherwise losing legitimacy are likely to face removal through a free and fair election. Though a loss of legitimacy could

undermine an authoritarian leader’s support amongst the citizenry, those constituents will have few means to unseat the head of state. Diversionary theory has consequently been largely limited to explaining the behavior of democracies and the inclusion of

authoritarian regimes in models that use proxies as simple as economic performance could seem ill-founded. Not until the offerings of Pickering and Kisangani (2010) did researchers offer an explicitly authoritarian theory of diversion, and it was not until later that the likelihood of a coup was directly attested to (Miller and Elgün 2010).

These contributions, however, were still limited. While the risk of a coup can—

and does—prompt some leaders to behave more belligerently, conflict is not the option at 176

their disposal. Efforts to promote legitimacy domestically are one obvious avenue, though this dissertation has been more interested in looking at the influences of coup-proofing. Coup-proofing should be of interest to diversionary theorists because it reduce the incentive for seeking diversionary actions by lowering the likelihood they will actually be removed. It should be of interest to conflict scholars more generally due to the influence of coup-proofing on the fighting capacity of the state. Influence conflict scholars such as Reiter and Stam (1998) and Biddle and Long (2004) have pointed to coup-proofing as having a detrimental influence on capabilities due to selective

recruitment and promotion policies that had little to do with merit. Pilster and Böhmelt (2012) furthered this by pointing to a lack of transparency and accountability in the armed forces. The preceding pages have pointed to how coup-proofing can undermine the quality of a national army by creating coordination obstacles in the armed forces and through these transparency mechanisms. The findings indicate that the conflict

likelihood of democracies and non-democracies are similarly influenced by structural coup-proofing. However, the transparent nature of democracies will guarantee that resources given to the military in terms of funding and materiel will be a legitimate contribution to the quality of the armed forces, in contrast to authoritarian regimes that put a disproportionately high level of emphasis on salaries and symbolic spending. Such findings clearly have important implications for the growing literature on regime type and war.

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3.2 POTENTIAL EXTENSIONS FOR THE INTERSTATE CONFLICT LITERATURE The findings offered in this dissertation can be extended in a number of ways. First, the work of Pilster and Böhmelt (2011) suggests that armies that are less coup-proofed display better battlefield effectiveness. Chapter 4 suggested that coup-proofed countries should be less likely to enter a dispute to begin with. Future efforts could refine the relationship between conflict onset and performance by employing a selection equation as seen in Chapter 3’s coup tests. Second, prior efforts to assess the influence of military resources (e.g., expenditures) on conflict performance have yet to consider the

conditional influence that regime type (i.e., level of democratization) can have on such variables. The findings in this dissertation suggest that the nature of regime type has a dramatic influence on the relationship between military expenditures and military effectiveness.

Third, this dissertation looked specifically at the decision to initiate a dispute.

More attention could be dedicated to the beginning of conflict by considering the

additional dynamics of dispute reciprocation or conflict avoidance. Leaders could wait to capitalize on a verbal threat from a rival or, conversely, a leader could intentional avoid potentially hostile interactions with a leader that they view as vulnerable.

4. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF CIVIL WAR

4.1 CONTRIBUTIONS

Given the much more frequent nature of coups than civil war, rational leaders can be expected to dedicate more attention to preventing coups than civil war. Rational leaders would consequently dedicate more resources to combating coups than preventing other forms of intrastate conflict, such as a popular uprising or insurrection. Chapter 2

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carefully discussed a number of important consequences that coup-proofing has on military capabilities, and Chapter 4 demonstrated that coup-proofed regimes are indeed less likely to initiate an interstate dispute. Chapter 5 sought to test whether the negative consequences of coup-proofing would have important implications for the onset of civil war. Prior efforts to quantify the fighting capacity of the state has largely relied on crude indicators such as GDP per capita or number of military personnel. This offering

presented a more direct consideration of military capabilities by looking at the

implications of coup-proofing, offering a potential paradox: efforts to prevent coups will make leaders more vulnerable to insurgency.

Support for this paradox was mixed. Coup-proofing, as a general rule, does not seem to be additive to the onset of civil war. Purges were not at all indicative of conflict occurrence, while efforts to spoil the armed forces presented mixed results. However, the assessment led to an interesting finding in regards to structural coup-proofing. The chapter found tentative support for the idea that paramilitary units can actually serve well in preventing or combating insurgencies (Janowitz 1977). This view, however, assumes that those in power are actually willing to deploy units meant to protect the regime to potentially far-off arenas of conflict. The results reveal that regimes seem to be less willing to utilize their paramilitaries to prevent the rise of an insurgency when the risk of a coup is high. In times when leaders might feel comfortable in their capitals they are freer to use these precious resources to combat other forms of removal, in this case civil war.

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4.2 POTENTIAL EXTENSIONS FOR THE CIVIL WAR LITERATURE

A number of steps could be taken to further the analyses presented here. First, coup-proofing could have other meaningful implications for other civil war dynamics such as duration or outcome. Structural coup-proofing might only have a conditional influence on the onset of civil war, but could have a meaningful influence on how the war is actually fought. Second, I earlier noted the potential relationship between structural coup-proofing and the coup trap. Coups in heavily coup-proofed regimes will frequently see the need for a shuffling of the armed forces. While the average purge of the armed forces might be meaningless, purges of a highly capable paramilitary could dramatically increase the mobilizational capacity of would-be insurgents. Additional investigations could consider the nature of those being purged, giving specific attention to these well-trained coup-proofing units.