Collaborative Research on the Political Economy of Military Spending in the Developing World

对欠发达国家军费开支和军备积累的研究主要集中在军备竞赛上。发展中世界的军备竞赛尤其暴力和致命。这项调查还将考察发展中国家的决策者如何利用军事预算来帮助控制其经济并加强其内部政治支持，从而加深我们对发展中世界军事开支模式的理解。国防政策制定的这些方面在西方工业化社会中已被证明是重要的，但很少在发展中社会的背景下进行研究。本质上，研究人员将在八个重要的武器生产国的发展中国家测试这些想法，以探索国内政治和经济担忧之间的相互作用是否也适用于全球更广泛的情况。这些担忧有助于决定工业化国家的军费政策。更具体地说，西方民主国家的国防和福利权衡已经有了很大的了解，但这种权衡在发展中国家是如何运作的？将对印度、韩国、台湾、以色列、埃及、阿根廷和巴西以及南非的军事开支的政治经济学进行系统、深入的案例研究。将利用以前工作中的见解，开发每个社会中相关数学动态的小型计算机模拟。然后，研究中每个国家的数据将被用来“测试”假设关系的统计有效性。这些数据将包括关于武器支出、武器生产、武器销售、武装部队规模、战争伤亡等的量化信息。等等。除了每个社会的国内政治局势的信息外，还将使用国民生产总值、通货膨胀率、企业利润、政府赤字等经济数据。与经济模型非常相似，这些模型将允许探索不同的政策情景。这项研究的成功完成应该会增强我们对发展中国家国防开支的理解--据估计，在过去40年里，那里大约有1600万人死于战争。

Studies of military spending and arms accumulation in less developed countries have concentrated on arms races. Arms races in the developing world have been especially violent and deadly. This investigation will amplify our understanding of military spending patterns in the developing world by also examining the specific ways in which decision-makers in the developing world use the military budget to help control their economies and to augment their internal political support. These aspects of defense policy making have been shown to be important in Western industrialized societies, but rarely studied in the context of a developing society. In essence, the researchers will be testing these ideas for eight developing nations that are significant arms producers to explore whether the interplay between domestic political and economic concerns, that helps to determine military spending policy in the industrialized world, also apply more generally around the globe. More specifically, a great deal is already known about defense-welfare tradeoffs in Western democracies, but, how, if at all, does this tradeoff operate in the developing world. Systematic, in depth case studies for the political economy of military spending in India, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, Argentina and Brazil, and South Africa will be conducted. A small computer simulation of the relevant mathematical dynamics in each society will be developed drawing on the insights from prior work. Data for each nation in the study will then be used to "test" the statistical validity of the hypothesized relationships. These data will consist of quantitative information about arms expenditures, arms productions, arms sales, the size of the armed forces, war casualties, et. cetera. Economic data such as GNP, inflation rates, corporate profits, governmental deficits will also be used in addition to information about the domestic political situation in each society. Much like models of the economy, these models will permit different policy scenarios to be explored. Successful completion of this research should embellish our understanding of defense spending in the developing world - - where according to one estimate, roughly 16 million lives have been lost to warfare during the past 40 years.