A Comparative Analysis of the Political and Economic Performance of Military and Civilian Regimes

Abstract

In this 2nd of a series of reports on a cross-national aggregate project designed explicitly to examine the performance of military regimes the purpose is to evaluate the performance of military and civilian regimes along a range of political economic and military variables. The performance of military regimes cannot be assessed adequately without comparing their performance to that of civilian regimes and this requirement has led to the definition of 4 populations of regimes: 1) military regimes - the armed forces have made a coup established a government in which the main executive post is held by a military person and have stayed in power for at least the major part of 1 year; 2) periods of civilian rule in countries that have experienced a military regime (CRM); 3) all other low income countries which have experienced only civilian rule (CR 900-); and 4) high-income systems (CR 900+) and this category is included primarily for reference purposes. The study supports the more recent studies of the case or area variety strongly emphasizing the diversity of military regimes. At the most general level the findings suggest the following: 1) military regimes do not in aggregate form a distinctive regime type in terms of performance; 2) there is a degree of diversity within military regimes which is not dissimilar to the diversity found within civilian regimes; and 3) the general degree of similarity or dissimilarity between military and civilian regimes varies from 1 variable or 1 category of variables to another. Cluster analysis has provided the most useful general overview of military regimes. This has shown that a sizable proportion of military and civilian regimes are indistinguishable in terms of performance. The overview generated by the cluster analysis and complemented by the array of difference tests most accurately and profitably describes the diversity of military regimes.