Political-Military Corruption and Military Performance in Extra-State Wars through Security Governance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15575/politicon.v8i1.54723Keywords:
Corruption, Accountability, Governance, Oversight, War Outcomes, Interstate War, Proxy War, extractive, Foreign PolicyAbstract
Corruption weakens the political and institutional foundations through which states organize, control, and deploy military power. In extra-state wars, the conventional states often possess material advantages that do not automatically translate into effective military performance. This study aims to examine how political-military corruption shapes state performance in extra-state wars through the lens of security governance. The study uses a quantitative explanatory design based on historical conflict and governance datasets. The main unit of analysis is the state-war observation in extra-state wars recorded by the Correlates of War dataset. Corruption is measured through political corruption and regime corruption indicators, while military performance is examined through war outcomes, loss exchange ratios, and war duration. The analysis uses logistic regression for war outcomes and ordinary least squares regression for logged loss ratios and logged war duration. The principal findings show that corruption is more clearly associated with defeat and higher relative losses than with conflict duration. The study concludes that corruption weakens military performance by damaging the governance mechanisms that convert material resources into effective military action. This article contributes to political science by linking corruption, security governance, state capacity, and civil-military control to the study of military performance.
References
Allen, M. (2014). The rise, decline, and rebirth of extra-state conflicts. Explorations of Empirical and Formal Research in Political Science.
Bairoch, P. (1976). Europe’s gross national product: 1800–1975. Journal of European Economic History, 5(2), 282.
Bayly, C. A. (2004). The birth of the modern world 1780–1914. TJ International Ltd.
Bechev, D. (2022). Turkey under Erdoğan: How a country turned from democracy and the West. Yale University Press.
Beckley, M. (2010). Economic development and military effectiveness. Journal of Strategic Studies, 33(1).
Beckley, M. (2018). The power of nations: Measuring what matters. International Security, 43(2).
Berdiev, A., Goel, R., & Saunoris, J. (2020). The path from ethnic inequality to development: The intermediary role of institutional quality. World Development, 130.
Bernhardsson, H. (2019). The link between ethnic fractionalization and corruption revised: Ethnic voting in Africa. QoG Working Paper Series, 13.
Besley, T., & Persson, T. (2009). The origins of state capacity: Property rights, taxation, and politics. American Economic Review, 99(4).
Biddle, S., Macdonald, J., & Baker, R. (2018). Small footprint, small payoff: The military effectiveness of security force assistance. Journal of Strategic Studies, 41(1–2).
Biddle, S., & Zirkle, R. (1996). Technology, civil-military relations, and warfare in the developing world. Journal of Strategic Studies, 19(2).
Binetti, M. N. (2024). Far from home: The impact of corruption on tactical military effectiveness. Journal of Global Security Studies, 9(4).
Bolt, J., & van Zanden, J. L. (2024). MPD version 2023: Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy: A new 2023 update. Journal of Economic Surveys.
Brooks, R. A. (2019). Integrating the civil military relations subfield. Annual Review of Political Science, 22.
Bullock, J., & Jenkins, M. (2020). Corruption and marginalization. Transparency International.
Center for Systemic Peace. (2018). Polity5 project: Political regime characteristics and transitions, 1800–2018.
Chang, E. C. C., Golden, M. A., & Hill, S. J. (2010). Legislative malfeasance and political accountability. World Politics, 62(2).
Chayes, S., et al. (2014). Corruption: The unrecognized threat to international security. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Collier, P., & Hoeffler, A. (2004). Greed and grievance in civil war. Oxford Economic Papers, 56(4).
Cook, S. (2016, July). How Erdogan made Turkey authoritarian again. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/how-erdogan-made-turkey-authoritarian-again/492374/
Darden, K. (2001). Blackmail as a tool of state domination: Ukraine under Kuchma. East European Constitutional Review, 10(2–3), 67–71.
Decety, N. (2024). Fighting on quicksand: Corruption weakens state capacity in war. Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare, 7(2).
Dincer, O. C. (2008). Ethnic and religious diversity and corruption. Economics Letters, 99(1).
Feaver, P. D. (1999). Civil military relations. Annual Review of Political Science, 2.
Ferraz, C., & Finan, F. (2008). Exposing corrupt politicians: The effects of Brazil’s publicly released audits on electoral outcomes. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(2).
Filson, D., & Werner, S. (2004). Bargaining and fighting: The impact of regime type on war onset, duration, and outcomes. American Journal of Political Science, 48(2).
Gentil-Fernandes, L., & Otto, J. (2024). Corrupting the battlefield: How corruption influences belligerents’ battlefield performance. International Interactions, 50(5).
Goemans, H. E. (2000). Fighting for survival: The fate of leaders and the duration of war. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44(5).
Golden, M. A., & Picci, L. (2005). Proposal for a new measure of corruption, illustrated with Italian data. Economics and Politics, 17(1).
Grauer, R., & Horowitz, M. (2012). What determines military victory? Testing the modern system. Security Studies, 21(1).
Gründler, K., & Potrafke, N. (2019). Corruption and economic growth: New empirical evidence. European Journal of Political Economy, 60.
Hanson, J. K., & Sigman, R. (2021). Leviathan’s latent dimensions: Measuring state capacity for comparative political research. Journal of Politics, 83(4).
Headrick, D. (1981). The tools of empire: Technology and European imperialism in the nineteenth century. Oxford University Press.
Helmbold, R. (1987). Do battles and wars have a common relationship between casualties and victory? U.S. Army Concepts Analysis Agency.
Hodgson, G., & Jian, S. (2007). The economies of corruption and the corruption of economies: An international perspective. Journal of Economic Issues, 41(4).
Hoffman, P. T. (2012). Why was it Europeans who conquered the world? Journal of Economic History, 72(3).
Hoyt, T. D. (2007). Social structure, ethnicity, and military effectiveness: Iraq, 1980–2004. In R. A. Brooks & E. A. Stanley (Eds.), Creating military power: The sources of military effectiveness (pp. 55–79). Stanford University Press.
Hugo, E., Savage, D., Schneider, F., & Torgler, B. (2022). Two sides of the coin: Exploring the duality of corruption in Latin America. Cambridge University Press.
Kaufmann, D., & Kraay, A. (2024). The worldwide governance indicators: Methodology and 2024 update (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 10952). World Bank.
Kinsey, C. (2006). Corporate soldiers and international security: The rise of private military companies. Routledge.
Kitamura, S. (2022). World Historical Battles Database [Data set]. OSF.
Fearon, J. D., & Laitin, D. (2012). How persistent is armed conflict? APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper.
Langlois, C., & Langlois, J.-P. (2009). Does attrition behavior help explain the duration of interstate wars? A game theoretic and empirical analysis. International Studies Quarterly, 53(4).
Le Billon, P. (2001). The political ecology of war: Natural resources and armed conflicts. Political Geography, 20(5).
Long, S. (2015). A winning proposition? States’ military effectiveness and the reliability of their allies. International Politics, 52, 335–348.
Long, S., Cochran, K., & Wagstaff, W. (2016). Measuring military effectiveness: Calculating casualty loss-exchange ratios for multilateral wars, 1816–1990. International Interactions, 43(6).
Lyall, J. (2020a). Divided armies: Inequality and battlefield performance in modern war. Princeton University Press.
Lyall, J. (2020b). Replication data for: Divided armies (Version 2) [Data set]. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/DUO7IE
Mauro, P. (1995). Corruption and growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110(3).
Min, E. (2020). Interstate war battle dataset (1823–2003). Journal of Peace Research, 58(2).
Min, E. (2021). Interstate War Battle Dataset (Version 1.0) [Data set]. Harvard Dataverse.
Nolan, C. J. (2017). The allure of battle: A history of how wars have been won and lost. Oxford University Press.
Olken, B. A. (2007). Monitoring corruption: Evidence from a field experiment in Indonesia. Journal of Political Economy, 115(2).
Orjuela, C. (2014). Corruption and identity politics in divided societies. Third World Quarterly, 35(5).
Reiter, D., & Stam, A. C. (2016). Learning from the battlefield: Information, domestic politics, and interstate war duration. International Organization, 70(2).
Rohwer, A. (2009). Measuring corruption: A comparison between Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index and the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators. CESifo DICE Report, 7(3).
Rose-Ackerman, S., & Palifka, B. J. (2016). Corruption and government: Causes, consequences, and reform. Cambridge University Press.
Rosen, S. P. (1995). Military effectiveness: Why society matters. International Security, 19(4).
Rosenau, J. N. (1980). The scientific study of foreign policy. Frances Pinter.
Sarkees, M. R., & Wayman, F. (2010). Resort to war: 1816–2007. CQ Press.
Sarkees, M. R., Wayman, F. W., & Singer, J. D. (2003). Inter-state, intra-state, and extra-state wars: A comprehensive look at their distribution over time, 1816–1997. International Studies Quarterly, 47(1).
Schondorf, R. (2005). Extra-state armed conflicts: Is there a need for a new legal regime? Journal of International Law and Politics, 37(1).
Singer, J. D. (1988). Reconstructing the Correlates of War dataset on material capabilities of states, 1816–1985. International Interactions, 14.
Singer, J. D., Bremer, S., & Stuckey, J. (1972). Capability distribution, uncertainty, and major power war, 1820–1965. In B. Russett (Ed.), Peace, war, and numbers (pp. 19–48). Sage.
Tagarev, T. (2010). Enabling factors and effects of corruption in the defense sector. Connections, 9(3).
Treisman, D. (2000). The causes of corruption: A cross-national study. Journal of Public Economics, 76(3).
Wade, S. J., & Reiter, D. (2007). Does democracy matter? Regime type and suicide terrorism. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 51(2).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Citation Check
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Nathan Decety
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
.jpg)
