War Makes the Regime: Regional Rebellions and Political Militarization Worldwide

War can make states, but can it also make regimes? This article brings the growing literatures on authoritarianism and coups into conversation with the older research tradition analyzing the interplay between war and state formation. The authors offer a global empirical test of the argument that regional rebellions are especially likely to give rise to militarized authoritarian regimes. While this argument was initially developed in the context of Southeast Asia, the article deepens the original theory by furnishing a deductively grounded framework embedded in rational actor approaches in the coup and civil-military literatures. In support of the argument, quantitative tests confirm that regional rebellions make political militarization more likely not simply in a single region, but more generally.

Automated summary

This article explores the relationship between war, state formation, and regime building, and empirically confirms that regional rebellions are more likely to lead to political militarization, extending the existing theory.