Economic Growth,Regime Insecurity,and Military Strategy: Explaining the Rise of Noncombat Operations in China

Abstract

Although China's armed forces have yet to complete its ambitious modernization program, its military strategy has begun to emphasize the ability to conduct noncombat operations such as disaster relief and peacekeeping in addition to traditional war fighting. This new component of China's military strategy is best explained by an unexpected relationship between economic growth and regime security. Although growth is key to the legitimacy of leaders in developing countries, it also creates new sources of domestic unrest and increases the vulnerability of the economy to external shocks, both of which, if unchecked, can harm future growth. As a result, developing countries such as China may use their armed forces to maintain political stability and provide services that the state lacks, such as emergency disaster relief. These conclusions are based on original data from China.     

The Prime Minister and the Bomb: John Gorton,W.C. Wentworth and the Quest for an Atomic Australia

The efforts of the Liberal government led by John Gorton to acquire a locally built nuclear deterrent stretch back into the 1950s when Robert Menzies preferred to rely on the American or British nuclear umbrella for protection. Gorton took a different view and the advocates of an independent Australian nuclear capability rejoiced upon his elevation to the Liberal leadership. We argue that Gorton's ambitions advanced as far as they did in the latter 1960s due to the support, or urgings, from an informal coalition of scientists (particularly Philip Baxter) and discontented fringes of the parliamentary Liberal Party. In particular, the maverick backbencher, W.C. Wentworth, played a key role in mobilising support for Gorton's controversial quest to acquire an independent nuclear capacity.     

Institutional Design, Military Rule, and Regime Transition in Argentina (1976–1983): an Extension of the Remmer Thesis1

Abstract— In this essay, I argue that institutions in military regimes have a significant impact not only on regime durability, but also on the level of control the military is likely to exert when it withdraws from rule. Borrowing from a typology of military regimes developed by Karen Remmer, I note how the feudal regime engenders a level of investment that drives it to remain in office despite the inability of this institutional arrangement to contain politicisation in the armed forces. The obstinacy of the feudal regime thus inevitably leads it toward collapse. The argument is tested with a detailed case study of the Proceso regime in Argentina.