Suchergebnisse

This study asks which attributes make states the more valuable partners in military coalition operations. Due to the uncertainty inherent in combat in general and coalition operations in particular, successful military cooperation depends on the amount of discretion given to national armed forces. Since democracies usually have more harmonious civil-military relations, restricting the discretion of military agents is a relatively less attractive and needed tool for democratic principals. This in turn makes democratic states the more valuable allies. The argument has two empirical implications: On one hand, a state conducting a military intervention should be more likely to build a coalition with its allies, the more democratic allies it has. On the other hand, military interventions by democratic military coalitions should end more quickly with success for the interveners than interventions by nondemocratic coalitions. These hypotheses are tested and supported using data on military interventions between 1946 and 2001. (International Interactions/ FUB 2011)

While there were several relatively short uprisings in Northern Africa and the Middle East during the Arab Spring, the dispute between the rebels and government forces in Syria has evolved into a full-scale civil war. We try to predict the length of the Syrian insurgency with a three-stage technique. Using out-of-sample techniques, we first assess the predictive capacity of 69 explanatory variables for insurgency duration. After determining the model with the highest predictive power, we categorize Syria according to the variables in this final model. Based on in-sample approaches, we then predict the duration of the Syrian uprising for three different scenarios. The most realistic point prediction is 5.12 years from the insurgency's start, which suggests an end date between the end of 2016 and early 2017.

This study examines the influence of civil–military relations on military effectiveness. More specifically, we investigate how coup-proofing, that is, the strategies and tactics employed to prevent the military from seizing power, affects battlefield performance. The main argument claims that coup-proofing has a negative impact on soldiers' leadership qualities, initiative, and the ability to coordinate different military units. Ultimately, the higher a country's coup-proofing efforts relative to its opponent, the worse its effectiveness on the battlefield. We test this hypothesis using data on battlefield outcomes and coup-proofing between 1967 and 1999.