Investigating the Relationship between Political Regimes and Military Spending in the Persian Gulf Countries

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistan Professor of Economic, Faculty of Economic, Islamic Azad University - Salmas Branch, Urmia, Iran.

Abstract

The issue of economy and its relationship with military sectors in a country under the title of defense economy is a very important and complex issue that can be analyzed from different angles. Defense economics has been recognized as one the most important factors in any country. Economist have been studying different aspects of this area regarding economics factor such as debt, growth, international trade and political regimes. Different economic, political and strategic factors can affect the demand for defense spending. In countries with oil income, one of the economic factors affecting defense spending can be the amount of oil income, which is considered as a financial source for military expenditures in these countries. Also, the type of regime that governs a country can be considered one of the main factors that determine defense spending in that country. In the last decade, many of these studies focused on investigating the relationship among political regimes and military expenditure. The theoretical framework illustrated that there is a negative relationship between these two variables. In this study, we aimed to investigate this relationship among Persian Gulf countries us in Hsu (2010) political variables and the ratio of military expenditure from 2000 to 2020. We also used dynamic panel approach with GMM estimator and with the variables of political regimes, the ratio of military expenditures to GDP, oil revenues, healthcare expenditures, and government expenditures without military expenditures to evaluate this relationship. The results depicted that there is a negative relationship between political regimes and military expenditure confirming the latter research in this area. This result was consistent with the studies of economic researchers given in this research. Moreover, the results showed that the rise of military expenditure does not have any correlation with oil rents. Thus, the amount of military expenditure has more prior factors than oil revenue.

Keywords

References

References
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http://www.sipri.org/research/arma ments/milex
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator
http://www.systemicpeace.org/warlist/warlist.htm
Mesopotamian Political Studies
Volume 2, Issue 1
May 2023
Pages 129-149

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History

  • Receive Date: 25 December 2022
  • Revise Date: 30 May 2023
  • Accept Date: 10 June 2023

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