Military expenditure and economic development in China: an empirical inquiry

Increases in military spending have a big impact on the socioeconomic conditions in any country. However, there is no consensus as to whether the rising military expenditure is beneficial or detrimental to economic growth. The present study chose China as a case study to empirically examine a complex relationship between military expenditure and economic development. The findings from the Johansen cointegration test indicated that there existed a long-run relationship between China’s military spending and economic growth. Furthermore, the Granger causality test detected a unidirectional causality from economic development to military expenditure. These results were further confirmed by the findings from the impulse response function. This means that China represents an example of a developing economy where the size of military expenditure expands in the process of economic transformation.     

The growth in military expenditure in Germany 1951–2011: did parties matter?

We examine whether government ideology was correlated with the growth in military expenditure in Germany over the period 1951–2011. Using various measures of government ideology, the results do not show any effect. The exception is an ideology measure based on the Comparative Manifesto Project (left-right scale): using this measure, the results show that the growth in military expenditure increased by about 2.4 percentage points, when the ideology variable (right-wing) increased by one standard deviation. This effect, however, is based on observations until the early 1960s and cannot be generalized. The major political parties agreed on how to evaluate international risks and threats. Government ideology retired to the background. We conjecture that the consensus among the major parties will persist – even if military spending needs to be increased in response to new international risks and threats.     

Quantitative monitoring of military transformation in the period 1992–2010: Do the protagonists of transformation really change more than other countries?

Military transformation is a complex, slow, asymmetric, changeable, political, and not necessarily completely rational process that clearly needs an effective monitoring mechanism. This paper fills a gap in current literature by creating and testing a model for multi-dimensional and multi-level quantitative monitoring of military transformation applicable in any country. The model is based on 10 transformation indicators that reflect changes in organizational structure, personnel structure, weapon systems, and defense spending. Its application on a sample of seven countries (USA, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and China) in the period from 1992 to 2010 unexpectedly shows that the USA – a protagonist in the transformation process among allies as well as globally – has carried out the smallest relative change. The non-directed transformation index indicates that Russia carried out 51.8% more change (or 34.1 index units), and the directed index indicates that Poland carried out 157.2% (or 40.8 index units) more change than the USA.     

New sources of military change – armed forces as normal organizations

The literature on how European states have adapted to the post-cold war security environment ffocuses invariably on different understandings of military transformation, a process which is seen as inherently different from other forms of organizational change. However, as this paper argues, new management practices, going back to the introduction of so-called New Public Management (NPM) reforms throughout Europe in the 1980s, have eventually penetrated also the last bastion of the old state – the defense sector. Taking a critical approach to the idea of military transformation and existing theories of military change, the paper demonstrates how other international developments have pushed towards what may be seen as a “normalization” of Europe’s defense sectors. This has important implications for how we approach and understand change in contemporary defense organizations.     

Soldiering the terrain of war: Zimbabwean soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998–2002)

The paper reveals how Zimbabwean soldiers who fought in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998–2002) were challenged by the terrain of war. While soldiers are trained to live and fight in dreadful wars, I argue that immersing oneself in the war terrain is neither mathematical nor calculative; rather, war tactics to be employed are defined by the context in which soldiers operate in. When soldiers reflect on and about the war, they unconsciously produce accounts that are often not completely heroic, but a life lived in fear as well an issue that they had never anticipated when they set out to war. A main finding of this study is that while these soldiers were deployed to fight against the rebels, they find difficulties in locating physical features from map reading to the ground, distinguishing the enemy from civilian people and deployed for days without eating a proper meal as well as seeing their fellow soldiers dying in the context of war. The paper provides a vantage point in which we can also understand that trained soldiers do not exert total power over war terrains, they are sometimes challenged by the war situation itself.     

Rethinking military behavior during the Arab Spring

Why did some Arab militaries remain loyal to authoritarian rulers amid mass uprisings during the Arab Spring while others defected to the opposition? One popular explanation shows this variation with reference to the degree of military institutionalization: institutionalized militaries defected, while patrimonial militaries remained loyal. This article argues that the institutionalization hypothesis does not provide a complete account of the mechanisms through which the degree of military institutionalization leads to either defection or continued loyalty. This shortcoming stems from the fact that scholars have treated military institutionalization as a catch-all concept for three distinct variables: ethnic stacking of the military, patronage distribution, and organizational factionalization. Examining the interaction between these variables highlights the mechanisms through which military defection occurs, and therefore that disaggregating institutionalization into its component parts provides a more complete explanation of military behavior during the Arab Spring.     

新军事革命与C4I系统

介绍了联合作战的概念,着重分析了Ｃ４Ｉ在联合作战中的地位和作用、新军事革命对Ｃ４Ｉ的影响,并提出了几点看法。     

武警无人机应用发展研究

武警部队非战争军事行动不断延伸,为满足遂行多样化任务的需要,武警无人机发展势在必行。借助军民融合优势,强化已有机型功能,拓展研发适合各警种任务特点的新机型,分析并提出武警无人机未来发展方向,以期为提升各警种联合行动效能提供思路。     

试论军校课程管理的几个问题

论述了军校课程管理的地位、作用和任务,军校课程管理目标和管理范畴,以及军校课程管理的6项基本原则,并提出了加强军校课程管理的若干有效途径。     

“X个X”型军事缩略语名称研究

缩略型用语在越来越多的情况下被采用。其形式多样,运用灵活,较好地满足了军事语言中管理、宣讲、文秘、研究等语体紧缩、精练的要求。伴随着这一语用形式的不断拓展,规范化使用已成为急需解决的一个重要问题。为此,应深入分析“×个×”型军事缩略名称的特点,总结归纳其主要类型,准确把握缩略语在运用时应注意的问题。