IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/hascer/2022-054.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Military Factions and Coups: Pathways to Power in Thailand

Author

Listed:

Abstract

We study the effect of military factionalization on the likelihood of military coups. Thailand’s military is characterized by the internal power struggle between factions for control of leadership positions an annual reshuffle. Utilizing a unique largescale dataset of all changes in Thai military leadership positions from 1968 to 2018, we identify key factions within the military and examine their potential role in military coups. Factional strength as measured by control of top military positions is positively associated with the likelihood of a military coup. Moreover, factional strength when measured by senior-level positions is also positively related to the likelihood of a military coup. By estimating a panel vector autoregression it is shown that the relationship between military factional strength and coups is unidirectional. We argue that these findings reflect the importance of understanding the dynamic mechanisms within the structure of the armed forces when examining the likelihood of a new coups d’état in countries characterized by recurring military power grabs.

Suggested Citation

  • Johansson, Anders C. & Engvall, Anders, 2022. "Military Factions and Coups: Pathways to Power in Thailand," Stockholm School of Economics Asia Working Paper Series 2022-54, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm China Economic Research Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hascer:2022-054
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://swopec.hhs.se/hascer/papers/hascer2022-054.1.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zuk, Gary & Thompson, William R., 1982. "The Post-Coup Military Spending Question: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Time Series Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(1), pages 60-74, March.
    2. King, Gary & Zeng, Langche, 2001. "Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 137-163, January.
    3. Alexander Galetovic & Ricardo Sanhueza, 2000. "Citizens, Autocrats, and Plotters: A Model and New Evidence on Coups D'État," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(2), pages 183-204, July.
    4. Gabriel Leon, 2014. "Loyalty for sale? Military spending and coups d’etat," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 363-383, June.
    5. de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno & Siverson, Randolph M. & Woller, Gary, 1992. "War and the Fate of Regimes: A Comparative Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(3), pages 638-646, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Balima, Hippolyte Weneyam, 2020. "Coups d’état and the cost of debt," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 509-528.
    2. Martin Gassebner & Jerg Gutmann & Stefan Voigt, 2016. "When to expect a coup d’état? An extreme bounds analysis of coup determinants," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 169(3), pages 293-313, December.
    3. Bennett, Daniel L. & Bjørnskov, Christian & Gohmann, Stephan F., 2021. "Coups, regime transitions, and institutional consequences," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 627-643.
    4. Beger, Andreas & Dorff, Cassy L. & Ward, Michael D., 2016. "Irregular leadership changes in 2014: Forecasts using ensemble, split-population duration models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 98-111.
    5. Hippolyte Weneyam Balima, 2020. "Coups d'état and the foreign exchange market," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(7), pages 1928-1950, July.
    6. Dorsch, Michael T. & Maarek, Paul, 2018. "Rent extraction, revolutionary threat, and coups in non-democracies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 1082-1103.
    7. Kawaura, Akihiko, 2018. "Generals in defense of allocation: Coups and military budgets in Thailand," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 72-78.
    8. Andrew T. Little, 2017. "Coordination, Learning, and Coups," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 61(1), pages 204-234, January.
    9. Tobias Böhmelt & Abel Escribà -Folch & Ulrich Pilster, 2019. "Pitfalls of Professionalism? Military Academies and Coup Risk," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 63(5), pages 1111-1139, May.
    10. Apolte, Thomas, 2022. "Mass protests, security-elite defection, and revolution," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 981-996.
    11. Angel M. Morales & Patrick Tarwater & Indika Mallawaarachchi & Alok Kumar Dwivedi & Juan B. Figueroa-Casas, 2015. "Multinomial logistic regression approach for the evaluation of binary diagnostic test in medical research," Statistics in Transition new series, Główny Urząd Statystyczny (Polska), vol. 16(2), pages 203-222, June.
    12. F. Gauthier & D. Germain & B. Hétu, 2017. "Logistic models as a forecasting tool for snow avalanches in a cold maritime climate: northern Gaspésie, Québec, Canada," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 89(1), pages 201-232, October.
    13. Douglas Cumming & Lars Hornuf & Moein Karami & Denis Schweizer, 2023. "Disentangling Crowdfunding from Fraudfunding," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 182(4), pages 1103-1128, February.
    14. Eunae Yoo & Elliot Rabinovich & Bin Gu, 2020. "The Growth of Follower Networks on Social Media Platforms for Humanitarian Operations," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(12), pages 2696-2715, December.
    15. Cemal Eren Arbath & Quamral H. Ashraf & Oded Galor & Marc Klemp, 2018. "Diversity and Conflict," Working Papers 2018-6, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    16. Lo Turco, Alessia & Maggioni, Daniela, 2018. "Effects of Islamic religiosity on bilateral trust in trade: The case of Turkish exports," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 947-965.
    17. Matija Kovacic & Claudio Zoli, 2021. "Ethnic distribution, effective power and conflict," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(2), pages 257-299, August.
    18. Blackman, Allen & Guerrero, Santiago, 2012. "What drives voluntary eco-certification in Mexico?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 256-268.
    19. Jacob Ausderan, 2018. "Reassessing the democratic advantage in interstate wars using k-adic datasets," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(5), pages 451-473, September.
    20. Paul Poast, 2013. "Issue linkage and international cooperation: An empirical investigation," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 30(3), pages 286-303, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    military; military coup; coup d’état; factions; Thailand;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H56 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - National Security and War
    • N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:hascer:2022-054. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: NanHee Lee (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cehhsse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.