The Political Economy of Military
Occupations and Leadership Changes:
an Empirical Evaluation 1900-2000
Carmela Lutmar
Princeton University
November 18, 2006
Outline
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Motivation
Research Questions
Goals of the Study
Literature Review
Argument
Hypotheses
Variables -- Measurement
Data
Findings, Problems, and Future Research
Motivation I
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“An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq
think the US should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in
four say the troops should leave immediately” (Zogby Poll, August 2005)
“89% of reserves and 82% of those in the National Guard said the US
should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines think so”
“…the US no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a selfsupporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free
from serious security or economic challenges… what we expected to
achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the
ground” (Washington Post, August 14, 2005)
Motivation II
We know quite a lot about the causes of war BUT...
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Not much on what ‘happens’ in bilateral relations once the guns stop
shooting
We know quite a lot about how different regime types
‘behave’ in interstate wars BUT…
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Not about how they treat defeated adversaries
We know quite a lot about the incentives regime types have
in making decisions about war BUT…
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Not about the foreign policy behavior of each state in the postwar
period and the way to measure this ‘behavior’ (compliance).
Majority of literature are case or region specific analyses.
We know quite a lot about trade patterns between various
regime types BUT…
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Not about trade patterns after defeated leaders have been deposed.
Motivation III
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Leaders lose power in various ways
IR literature focuses only lately on leaders as unit of analysis
Empirical evidence to link between leaders, tenure, and
domestic institutions
Focus on military occupations aimed (and following)
depositions.
Research Questions
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Is forceful leadership change the underlying
mechanism to promote friendlier bilateral
relationships?
What has been the average duration of interstate
military occupations? What is the ‘right’ time
occupying forces should stay in a state? And how do
the answers to these questions vary across regime
types of the occupier and the occupied states?
Is foreign forceful leadership change prolonging or
shortening a military occupation?
Goals of the Study
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Determining whether deposition is indeed a useful tool in
achieving greater cooperation by comparing the set of cases in
which a defeated leader has been deposed with those cases in
which the vanquished leader continues to stay in power after
the war or the foreign intervention.
Looking at military occupations in a more systematic way, and
in the longer run – at the ways law is restored after military
occupation, how do these patterns change in various regime
types, what components of governance are faster to be restored
following military occupations, and are depositions a useful
way to restore governance and law faster?
Military Occupations
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Rosecrance (1986)
Carlton (1992)
Lieberman (1996) – Does conquest pay?
Edelstein (2004) – Why some military occupations
succeed while others fail?
Rand (2005)
Enterline and Sarli (2005) – Large-N study of
duration of interstate military occupations
Many historical case studies
Military Occupations in International Law
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Benvenisti (1993) – examples of military occupations
ranging from the German occupation of Belgium
(WWII) to more recent occupations in Afghanistan
and Grenada, and the Israeli occupation of the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Argument
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We should observe variation across regime types when it
comes to ways of losing tenure and to incentives in behavior
when it comes to military occupations. Those variations are
consistent with the selectorate theory and with the various
expectations we have from leaders in democracies and nondemocracies even though they are motivated by the same
desire – staying in power.
Military Occupations -- Definition
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The presence of foreign military forces on one’s soil
as a result of either an interstate war or an
intervention (in civil war but not restricted to that) for
at least 15 days.
This definition excludes border clashes between
states.
Includes interventions for the purpose of deposing
leaders.
W/S/N Approach
(BdM, Smith, Siverson, and Morrow 2003)
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W – group that keeps
leader in power
S – those who contribute
to choosing leader
N – society
W<S<N by definition
Winning Coalition
Selectorate
N = society
Universal Political Institutions
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Every country has rules that define interactions
within its borders. Institutional arrangements define:
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Who is part of the selectorate
What constitutes a winning coalition
Selectorate = set of people with legal right to
participate in selection of the government
Winning Coalition = portion of selectorate (often
majority) whose support is needed for the incumbent
to remain in office
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In most democracies, this is a majority of the selectorate –
large
In autocracies, it is generally quite a small group of people
WSN Key Predictions
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Leaders supported by small W pay off their
coalition with private goods
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Leaders supported by large W pay off coalition
with public goods
Hypotheses
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The more non-democratic a regime is, the more likely its leader to be replaced by
non-constitutional means.
The likelihood of occupation increases after defeat in war and if the states are
neighbors.
The likelihood of occupation decreases as time goes by after a previous occupation.
The smaller (in size and population) a state is, the less likely it is to be an occupier.
The more democratic a regime is, the shorter the occupation.
Bilateral trade in post-depositions periods increases the more non-democratic the
occupied country is.
A leadership change in the occupying state will shorten the duration of the
occupation.
Deposing a (defeated) leader prolongs the occupation.
Research Design
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Time frame (for depositions) – 1800-2000
US Depositions – 22 cases
General Depositions – 91 cases
Unit of analysis – country year – 2181 observations (for the US cases)
Unit of analysis – country year – 7429 observations (for all cases)
Set of military occupations in the 20th century
Dependent variable – Duration (days), Occupied (or not)
Independent variables – W, defeat in war, population
223 military occupations in the 20th century
Depositions – subset of all military occupations
Case Selection
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Temporal Domain for Descriptive Statistics – 1800-2000
(Depositions)
Temporal Domain for Inferential Statistics – 1900-2000
Spatial Domain – All Independent States
Deposition = all cases in which a leader has been removed
forcefully from power by military forces of a foreign state
Interstate wars and foreign interventions in civil wars
Interventions aimed at deposing leaders
Cases in which a leader resigned following a foreign military
invasion – WWI and WWII
Cases of alliance – the ‘main’ actor
Measurement
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W  based on the Polity IV data set. Ranges
between 0 and 1. The closer to 1, the “better” or
more democratic the state. The closer to 0, the more
non-democratic the state is.
Defeat in war  Dichotomous variable
Population  in hundreds of thousands
Neighbors  Number of contiguous neighbors
Time since last occupation  Days
“It’s not that I’m afraid to
die. I just don’t want to be
there when it happens.”
Woody Allen
Fate of Leaders 1900-2000
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Constitutional
 Elections
 Re-elected
 Not re-elected
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Non-Constitutional
 External Deposition
 Domestic
Deposition
 Assassination
 Natural Death
 None of the above
Some Numbers…
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91 External Depositions
51 Assassinations
 43 Shot
 4 Explosion
 1 Lynched
 3 Stabbed
None of the Above – 16
 8 Plane Crashes
 2 Poison
 1 Riding Accident
 1 Skidiving Accident
 1 Fire
 1 Car Accident
 1 Gun Battle
 1 Bitten by a Monkey
290 Coup d’etat
257 Exile
Weird
Assasinations
External
Coup
D’Etat
.05
.1
.15
.2
.25
.3
Constitutional Change and Domestic
Institutions
0
.2
.4
Size of Winning Coalition
.6
.8
.0058
.006
.0062
.0064
.0066
.0068
External Deposition & Domestic
Institutions
0
.2
.4
Size of Winning Coalition
.6
.8
.002
.004
.006
.008
Assassination & Domestic
Institutions
0
.2
.4
Size of Winning Coalition
.6
.8
.008
.01
.012
.014
.016
.018
Natural Death & Domestic
Institutions
0
.2
.4
Size of Winning Coalition
.6
.8
Fate & Competing Risks
Dependent Variable
Leader’s fate
Constitutional
External Deposition
Domestic Deposition
W
2.095
(.23)***
-1.46
(1.24)*
Independent Variables
Tenure
-.0015
(.0002)***
-.0052
(.00084)***
-2.86
-.0011
(.493)***
(.0005)**
Assassinations
-3.59
-.0036
(1.922)**
(.002)**
Natural Death
-1.075
-.0006
(1.166)
(.0011)
‘Weird’ Ways
3.44
-.0002
(3.85)
(.0022)
Note: Standard errors for coefficients appear in parentheses. All tests for statistical significance
are two-tailed. *p <.01; **p < .05; ***p<.001
Leaders Killed in ‘Weird’ Ways
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Leader Name
State
Year
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Tancrede Auguste
Alexander
Haiti
Greece
1913
1920
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Ghazi
Iraq
1939
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Jose Estigarribia
Paraguay
1940
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Boris III
Don Senanayake
Bulgaria
Sri Lanka
1943
1952
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Ramon Magsaysay
Philippines
1957
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Abdul Salam Arif
Harold Holt
Iraq
Australia
1966
1967
accident
Plane
crash
Plane crash
Drowned
Benediktsson
Teferi Banti
Ahmed Bouceif
Omar Herrera
Samora Machel
Mohammed Zia ul-Haq
Habyarimana
Iceland
Ethiopia
Mauritania
Panama
Mozambique
Pakistan
Rwanda
1970
1977
1979
1981
1986
1988
1994
skidiving
Fire
Gun battle
Plane crash
Plane crash
Plane crash
Plane crash
Plane crash
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Death
Poison
Bitten by
his monkey
Car
Accident
Plane
crash
Poison
Riding
Descriptive Statistics
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19th Century
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France and Austria main deposers
All deposing states = non-democracies
All targets – non-democracies
20th Century
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US and USSR main deposers
US deposes twice as many cases as the USSR
39 out of the 91 deposing states were democracies
The preferred targets were still non-democracies
45% of deposing states were democracies; 12.2% of target
states were democracies
Logit Model for Interstate Military Occupations
War Defeat
1.87***
(.356)
Contiguity
.157**
(.062)
Time since Last Occupation
-1.26***
(.147)
W
-1.43***
(.054)
Log-likelihood
-687.88
N
12,849
Note: Robust standard errors in parentheses.
* = 10%
** = 5%
*** = 1%
Gravity Model
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Independent Variable
Constant
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Trend
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DeposeLevel
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1/DeposeRate
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W1
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wtrend
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Lnpopb
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Lnencapb
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Distance
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Dependent Variable
2.307
(.383)***
-.011
(.0059)*
-.194
(.098)**
.492
(.35)
-1.21
(.54)**
.051
(.0074)***
.474
(.033)***
.513
(.0314)***
-.0002
(.00002)***
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Observations
R-squared
1530
.757
.
Findings
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The more non-democratic a state is, the more likely its leader to end up her
tenure in an ‘unpleasant’ manner…
Defeat in war increases the likelihood of a state to be occupied by the victor
or any other foreign rival.
the more contiguous neighbors a state has the more likely it is to be
occupied.
the more non-democratic a state is the more likely it is to be occupied.
the more time passes since a previous occupation, the less likely the same
state to experience another military occupation.
Bilateral trade increases in the short run after depositions the more nondemocratic the occupied state is. But in order for this level to be
maintained, or to increase, the state has to democratize.
Results robust under different specifications
Problems & Future Research
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How does the length of occupation affect
bilateral trade?
How do various ways of ending tenure affect
bilateral relationship?
A model – under which conditions you’d
rather depose a leader vs leave an existing one
(policy implementation trade off)