Indicators of Militarism and Democracy in Comparative Context: How Militaristic Tendencies Influence Democratic Processes in OECD Countries 2010–2016

This paper is a comparative study of the problem of militarism and democracy, specifically the impact of the first on the second, in contemporary Western and similar societies such as 36 OECD countries over time as during the 2010–2016 period. The study first identifies the indicators of militarism and democracy and constructs by aggregating them their composite indexes. The study then provides cross-national data for militarism and democracy over time. It presents descriptive results and findings of a cross-sectional time-series analysis of militarism and democracy. The study infers that the findings vindicate the warning about the threat of militarism for democracy. The paper aims to contribute to better understanding and predicting how militarism and democracy relate, especially the first influences the second. It is a paper with a high originality in view of that comparative analyses of militarism and democracy are relatively scarce in the literature.