Beyond "Guns versus Butter:" Security and Development

Abstract

Scholarly debate has raged for more than two decades about the relationship between military expenditures and economic growth in developing countries. The debate has focused on the effect of military outlays on economic performance. Some, such as Benoit (1973) and Biswas (1993), have discerned benefits to economic development from military spending. Others, like Lim (1983), Faini, et al. (1984), and Ball (1988), have concluded that military expenditures have a negative impact on economic growth. Still others, such asJoerding (1986), have found that military outlays neither help nor hinder economic development. Seeking Security and Development: The Impact of Military Spending and Arms Transfers attempts to move beyond this narrow analytic framework and explore the complexities of the linkages among security, military spending, and economic performance in the Third World. The book grew out of a series of workshops at Michigan State University involving political scientists, economists, and sociologists. The workshops sought to devise longitudinal, multidisciplinary, and comparative research designs for tackling questions bearing on these linkages. The contributions to Seeking Security and Development fall into three parts that are sandwiched between a short introduction by Norman Graham that sets the theoretical and collaborative contexts for the book and an even briefer conclusion that