Military spending did not ‘crowd out’ welfare in Middle East prior to Arab Spring
By a
The so-called "guns versus butter" or "welfare versus warfare" hypotheses - that prioritised military spending resulted in neglect of health and education thereby creating conditions that fomented public rebellion - is considered by many experts to be a root cause of the uprisings that gripped the region during 2011.
However, a team of researchers who analysed economic and security data from MENA nations in the 16 years leading up to the Arab Spring found no evidence of a trade-off between spending on the military and public services, specifically healthcare.
The researchers from Cambridge and the
They say the study's findings, published in the journal Defence and Peace Economics, provide a "cautionary note" against a reliance on simplistic correlations based on data from
"Our research finds reports of this apparent spending trade-off prior to the Arab Spring to be somewhat spurious," said Dr
"Academics and policy-makers should be careful in assuming that models and results from studies of other regions can be transplanted onto the
"Determining the cause of unrest is a rather more complex task than some experts may suggest. Historical experiences and political economy factors need to be considered."
While only
Coutts and colleagues ran
The team also looked at casualties resulting from domestic terror attacks in an attempt to estimate security needs that might have helped drive military spending in a region plagued by terrorism.
They found no statistically significant evidence that increased military spending had an impact on health investment. "Contrary to existing evidence from many European nations, we found that levels of military expenditure do not induce or affect cuts to healthcare in the
The researchers also found no evidence for casualties from terrorism affecting either health or military spending - perhaps a result of the routine nature of such occurrences in the region.
"There may have been a policy adaptation in which regional conflicts and security threats are no longer the main influence on government security and military spending decisions," said Daoud.
"However, health and military spending cannot be predicted by each other in this troubled region. Policy analysts should not single out military spending as a main culprit for the lack of investment in public goods.
"Once again we find that straightforward explanations for unrest in the
Keywords for this news article include: Defense, Military, Legal Issues, Investment and Finance,
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