IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v30y2021i3p285-300..html

African Junta and Defence Spending: A Capture Effect or Self-preservation?
[A Theory of Military Dictatorships]

Author

Listed:
  • Oasis Kodila-Tedika
  • Sherif Khalifa

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of the presence of a military ruler on military expenditure using a panel of sub-Saharan Africa countries. The paper also explores whether the relationship reflects a capture effect, is an outcome of the confrontational climate of the cold war or is a self-preservation effort by military rulers. The panel data estimations show that the presence of a military ruler has a statistically significant negative effect on military spending as a percentage of GDP. The coefficients are also not significantly different before or after the end of the cold war era. This implies that the negative relationship is driven by an effort by military rulers to preempt the ability of their peers to overthrow them from power. We also attempt to deal with potential endogeneity and consider the possibility of persistence in military spending. The paper uses the Arellano and Bond (1991) estimation technique that shows a negative but insignificant effect of the presence of a military ruler on military expenditure, while military spending shows a high degree of persistence.

Suggested Citation

  • Oasis Kodila-Tedika & Sherif Khalifa, 2021. "African Junta and Defence Spending: A Capture Effect or Self-preservation? [A Theory of Military Dictatorships]," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 30(3), pages 285-300.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:30:y:2021:i:3:p:285-300.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejaa015
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H56 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - National Security and War

    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:oup:jafrec:v:30:y:2021:i:3:p:285-300.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.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.