Taiwan's calculus on military spending

Abstract

Four alternative formulations of possible motives behind Taiwan's past patterns of resource allocation to the defense sector are examined: (1) arms race with China, (2) alliance maintenance with the U.S., (3) management of domestic political economy, and (4) budgetary incrementalism. Generalized least square regression is used to analyze the pertinent time series data. It shows that none of these models can capture entirely Taiwan's decisions on military manpower, military dollars, or weapons imports. Instead, it seems that these decisions have inovlved quite different processes and factors.