Detecting Problems in Military Expenditure Data Using Digital Analysis

The UN asks governments to report key figures of their annual military budgets with the aim of creating trust among member states. This goal can only be achieved if the data reported is accurate. However, although there are many reasons for governments to falsify data, the UN does not check for manipulation. In this paper, we apply Benford’s law to the military expenditure data of 27 states taken from the UN register. Our analysis of the first digits shows that the states with the greatest deviations from the expected Benford distribution and therefore the lowest data quality are the USA and the UK.     

Does Income Inequality Derive the Separatist Terrorism in Turkey?

Separatist terrorism has been a severe problem for Turkey since the mid-1980s. The conventional wisdom contends that economic deprivation in southeastern Turkey is the fundamental reason for the long-running battle against the Kurdish rebels. Considering that there is limited empirical literature on the roots of terrorism in Turkey, yielding conflicting results about the claim that the main cause of terrorism is deprived economic conditions, this study aims to answer whether there is a causal relationship between income inequality and separatist terrorism in Turkey. To this end, the Global Terrorism Data Base for the period of 1973–2006, two Theil indices of pay inequality as proxy for income inequality, and the vector autoregression and Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) methods are utilized. The results support the early findings that income inequality, a particular focus in this paper and an essential indicator of economic deprivation, is not a main cause of escalation of separatist terrorism in Turkey.     

POWER,INFLUENCE, AND HIERARCHY: DEFENSE INDUSTRIES IN A UNIPOLAR WORLD

The global defense‐industrial sector reflects the hierarchy of power in the post‐Cold War world. As in the larger international system, the United States plays the dominant role in the defense sector as well. It is a comparative advantage often used by US policymakers to influence the foreign policy behavior of other states. Curiously, the radical concentration of the world’s defense industrial sector, as described here, has received relatively little scrutiny from either academia or the media, even though it not only reflects the international order but provides the United States with considerable leverage in it.     

Financial versus human resources in the Greek‐Turkish arms race: A forecasting investigation using artificial neural networks

This paper aims at forecasting the burden on the Greek economy resulting from the arms race against Turkey and at concentrating on the leading determinants of this burden. The military debt and the defence share of GDP are employed alternatively in order to approximate the measurement of the arms race pressure on Greece, and the method used is that of artificial neural networks. The use of a wide variety of explanatory variables in combination with the promising results derived, suggest that the impact on the Greek economy resulting from this arms race is determined, to a large, extent, by demographic factors which strongly favour the Turkish side. Prediction on both miltary debt and defence expenditure exhibited highly satisfactory accuracy, while the estimation of input significance, indicates that variables describing the Turkish side are often dominant over the corresponding Greek ones.     

A rent‐seeking model of international competition and alliances∗

This paper presents an alternative approach for analyzing international competition and alliances as rent‐seeking contests that are able to capture the impure public good nature of defense spending. Two‐country Cournot and Stackelberg games are considered and comparative static results derived. A three‐country model is investigated, and alliance behavior is explored in the context of this rent‐seeking model. The conjecture that an alliance may become less effective if the allies’ interests become more closely aligned is verified. Finally, the model is generalized, and a Nash‐Cournot equilibrium is computed.     

The Demand for Turkish Defence Expenditure

Although a number of studies concerning Turkish defence-growth relation have been published in recent years, little attention is given the demand for Turkish defence expenditure. This is an important issue for understanding which variables contribute to the determination of the demand for military expenditure. However, it is difficult to develop a general theory or a standard empirical approach for the determination of the demand military expenditure. This study models and estimates the demand for Turkish defence expenditure for the period 1951-1998 using autoregressive distributed lag approach to cointegration (ARDL) following the methodology outlined in Pesaran and Shin (1999). This procedure can be applied regardless of the stationary properties of the variables in the sample and allows for inferences on long-run estimates, which is not possible under alternative cointegration procedures. The findings suggest that Turkish defence spending is determined by NATO's defence spending, Greece's defence spending and some security considerations.     

PEACE PROCESSES AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN THE HORN OF AFRICA

Conflict resolution processes must meet certain prerequisites and conditions. Unless the warring parties or the mediators meet, it will be difficult to find lasting and just solutions to the conflicts in the Horn (Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia, and Somalia). Most of these conflicts have ethnic or religious components and also have a lot do with the nature of the government institutions and the power distribution among the communities within these states. Identifying the main causes of the conflict and the issues involved in each country is a very necessary first step toward peace. Secondly, conditions have to be identified that would make the current peace agreements work. This includes identifying the specific problems faced by the parties involved; ascertaining the validity of the mechanisms through which the problems will be overcome; and planning how the agreements will be maintained. The knowledge that mediators have about the conflict is often as important as the actual meeting of parties at the negotiation table. This article also evaluates the peace initiatives underway in the Horn and attempts to identify the apparent reasons that prevented their implementation.