Influence of Prior Military Experience on Leaders Militarized Behavior

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Abstract

Policy makers assume political executives' life experiences affect policy choices. Recent studies focus on how political institutions shape leaders' choices, not personal attributes.
This article focuses on leaders and their backgrounds, theorizing that a leader's prior military background influences their evaluation of military force.
The study tests propositions using a new dataset with life background characteristics of over 2,500 heads of state from 1875 to 2004.
Results indicate leaders most likely to initiate militarized disputes/wars are those with military service but no combat experience and former rebels.
The 2004 US presidential election highlighted the candidates' military service backgrounds, with Kerry emphasizing his combat experience as a qualification for wartime leadership.
Nikita Khrushchev, a combat veteran, cited his war experiences in a message to John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, cautioning about the consequences of escalation.
Life experiences shape future behavior (psychology/sociology). This article studies military backgrounds of heads of state.
The study builds on existing research by focusing on leaders as independent actors and systematically testing propositions across space and time.
The research accounts for the interaction between leaders and domestic political institutions, considering how institutions screen leaders and constrain policy options.

Bringing Leader Experiences Back In Reviewing the Study of Leaders

The research examines if military service increases familiarity with force (making those that serve more likely to support military action), or if exposure to danger makes those who serve more hesitant to use force in the future.
Theorizes that leaders with military experience but no combat experience are the most conflict-prone because they have familiarity with military service but lack knowledge of the risks/consequences.
The study also tests hypotheses about military service outside the nation-state (rebel group participation), arguing that rebel leaders are risk-acceptant.
Results indicate leaders with prior military service, but no combat experience, are more likely to initiate militarized disputes/wars.
Prior rebel participants are even more likely to initiate militarized disputes than leaders lacking rebel/military experience.
Domestic political institutions matter. In autocratic countries or regimes lacking civilian control, leaders with combat experience are more likely to engage in militarized behavior due to socialization and selection processes.
The study addresses endogeneity concerning leader selection, controlling for the possibility that countries in dangerous neighborhoods are more likely to select leaders with prior military experience.

Bringing Leader Experiences Back in

Focuses on how leader experiences shape behavior, differing from most international relations literature that emphasizes domestic institutional constraints.
Current literature focuses on how domestic institutional constraints affect leadership tenure, the institutionally induced relationship between leadership tenure and conflict, the responsibility and punishment of leaders, and the decisions of leaders in the military arena.
Leaders operate within political system constraints, and examining the effect of personality attributes requires outlining how beliefs translate into policy.
Figure 1 demonstrates, conceptually, how leader beliefs operate through domestic political institutions to influence the policy process.
The causal sequence shows the potential importance of capturing leader experiences in explaining state behavior.

Why Do Leader Experiences Matter?

Individual experiences shape attitudes. Experiences in late adolescence and early adulthood have lasting effects on personality and risk propensity.
Prior experience functions as heuristics that drive how people estimate the costs/benefits of choices and the types of strategies they view as likely to succeed.
Prior experiences inform a leader's "sense of personal efficacy" and the level of knowledge about a situation reduces uncertainty about policy response.
Personal backgrounds of elected officials affect policy choices. Efficacy beliefs drawn from experience shape future foreign policy behavior.
The argument captures some of the variation in individual leader behavior, and the beliefs/psychologies of leaders may play a role in filtering how experiences are translated into policies.

The Role of Military Experience

Military experience may have a systematic impact on leaders' behavior because it offers a direct connection between pre-office behavior (fighting) and in-office behavior (initiating conflict).
Military experiences can be acute/traumatic, often occurring during late adolescence. Those who enter militaries do so for many reasons.
Experimental research suggests that those experiences have an independent influence on an individual’s personality and risk propensity.
Frequent conflicts between military/civilian leaders suggest that military/civilian elites may think differently about using force.
Some argue that military service may lead to militaristic behavior because it generates expertise in violence and socializes participants to think about force as a solution.
Sechser argues that ties to the military create parochial interests in favor of using force and decision-making biases favoring rapid escalation.
Exposure to combat can influence future beliefs about violence. Some data suggests that exposure to combat makes people more risk acceptant.
Weeks and Brecher find that military regimes are more likely to initiate conflicts because the normalization of violence makes them use force in office.
Huntington found that, within professional organizations, military experience leads to conservatism around the use of force, viewing states based on capabilities.
Janowitz argues that a lack of civilian knowledge about the military leads to the flawed perception of professional militaries as militaristic.
Military personnel are the ones who will risk death in conflicts and military leaders often perceive civilians as naive, so military conservatism results.
Civilian leaders, lacking knowledge about how force is used or an accurate understandings of the costs, are more prone to risky adventurism, or “chicken-hawk” aggressiveness.
Most existing work, however, tends to assume that all military service is essentially equivalent.
This study focuses on exposure to combat, the type of political regime, and rebel group participation, theorizing that different experiences within the military might affect individuals’ attitudes in different ways.
Differentiating between those with combat experience and those without may resolve the dispute between military conservatism and militarism.
Direct exposure to combat should generate more sensitivity to risk in the future.
Hypothesis 1: Leaders with military experience but no combat experience are more likely to initiate militarized disputes.

Effects of Civilian Control of the Military

Literature suggests professional military forces view war as a political process, with military aims subservient to political ones.
In political regimes run by the military, classical military professionalism is impossible, and those militaries lacking it will naturally select for political leaders who lack those values.
Nonprofessional militaries select for leaders who interpret their own military experiences in ways that lead to militarized behavior.
Domestic political institutions in nonmilitary regimes are more likely to avoid selecting for military personnel who react to those experiences by becoming more aggressive.
Hypothesis 2: Leaders with combat experience in autocracies and military regimes are more likely to initiate militarized disputes.

Participation in Rebel Movements

Participation in a rebel group is another type of experience that predicts more conflict-acceptant behavior once a leader takes office.
Former rebels who become national leaders tend to have had at least some position of leadership in rebel organizations, meaning they are more likely to join via active selection.
Success as a militarized rebel would reinforce the utility of military force as a strategy, and also give them higher levels of martial efficacy.
The grievances of rebels with the existing nation-state apparatus are so large that they decide the optimal strategy is to take up arms and secede or conquer the state. Engaging in rebellious or seditious activity is an extremely risk-acceptant choice.
Hypothesis 3: Leaders with rebel military experience are more likely to initiate militarized disputes than those without rebel military experience.
One objection to these arguments might be that the same national-level factors that lead individuals to have military or rebel experiences also make countries more likely to engage in militarized behavior, meaning any results are endogenous.

Research Design

Uses the Archigos data set to obtain the universe of heads of state from 1875 to 2004, along with when they entered and exited office.
Developed the Leader Experience and Attribute Descriptions (LEAD) data set, including the background life experiences of every leader in the Archigos universe.
MILITARY EXPERIENCE, NO COMBAT is coded 1 if the leader had prior military service but no combat experience, and 0 otherwise. COMBAT is coded 1 if the leader had combat experience, and 0 otherwise.
REBEL is coded 1 if the leader had prior rebel experience, and 0 otherwise.
PRIOR WAR WIN/LOSS and PRIOR REBEL WIN/LOSS are all coded 1 if the relevant condition is met, and 0 otherwise.
Monadic tests use the leader year as the basic unit of analysis. The main dependent variable is the initiation of militarized disputes, drawn from the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) data set.
The decision to use the MID data restricts the analysis end date to 2001, the last year where MID data are currently available.
Initiation is a dichotomous variable coded 1 if a state initiated a conflict in a given leader year, and 0 otherwise. Also wants to determine whether leader military backgrounds influence the propensity for a state to initiate a war.
Given the theoretically nonmonotonic effect of the independent variables, the analysis begins with separate logit models measuring dispute initiation and war.
Controls for a small number of variables identified by existing international relations theories that are not posttreatment to the military service variables of interest.
The material power of the state is incorporated by using the COW Material Capabilities score for each state (MATERIAL CAPABILITIES), the overall satisfaction of a state with the system leader (TAU B), and the AGE of the leader.
Controls for the effect that different institutions may have on the probability that leaders engage in militarized behavior with an AUTOCRACY variable that is 1 if a state scored at or below −7 on the Polity scale, and 0 otherwise.
To test H2 concerning military regimes, the data from Cheibub is used and a MILITARY DICTATOR variable is added, coded 1 if a country is a military regime and 0 otherwise.
LENGTH OF TIME IN OFFICE measures the number of days a leader has spent in office from the beginning of their term to the beginning of the year in question.
FIVE YEAR CHALLENGE LAG measures whether or not a country has been challenged in an MID in the last five years, a good indication of the interest a country might have in selecting a leader based on the ex ante risk of a dispute.

Statistical Results

Simple cross-tabulations show differences in the probability of a militarized dispute across relevant conditions. Leaders with prior service are more likely to initiate militarized disputes than those with no prior service/combat experience.
Leaders with prior rebel experience are also more likely to initiate militarized disputes.
The improved findings from adding the leader background variables is also statistically significant and improved the fit of the model. This demonstrates the value added from endogenizing the military experiences of leaders into models of international conflict.
As H1 predicts, the MILITARY SERVICE, NO COMBAT variable is consistently positive and statistically significant for MID initiation in Model 1, while combat is not significant.
Leaders with prior military experience but not combat experience are not just more likely to initiate low-level disputes, but wars.
A shift from no military experience to having military experience but no combat experience increases the probability of a militarized dispute by 43 percent.
Supporting H3, prior participation in a rebel group is nearly always positive and significant across model specifications, suggesting that those leaders who come to power with prior rebel experience are likely to be more dispute prone.
A shift from a leader not having a rebel background to having a rebel background increases the probability of a militarized dispute by 48 percent.
Figure 3 shows that a shift from a leader not having a rebel background to having a rebel background increases the probability of a militarized dispute by 48 percent.
The control variables behave in predicted ways. Countries with more material power are more likely to initiate militarized disputes, and countries that have been involved in MIDs in the recent past are likely to continue being involved in MIDs in the future.
To better understand the effects of prior military and rebel experience in the context of domestic political institutions, interactive models are used.
Model 3 interacts the leader variables of interest with the polity score of the country, Model 4 focuses specifically on autocracies, and Model 5 evaluates military regimes.
The interaction between MILITARY SERVICE, NO COMBAT and POLITY is significant in Model 3.
Hypothesis 2 is supported by a significant interaction between MILITARY SERVICE, NO COMBAT and severe autocracies
Leaders with combat experience, military or more autocratic regimes, are more likely to initiate a militarized dispute in a given year.

Endogeneity, strategic leader selection, and robustness.

The possibility that leaders are selected during times of turmoil because of their military experiences, or that the same factors that lead to their selection also lead to militarized disputes, is addressed by models designed to show the robustness of findings and test for these biases.
*To better control for the possibility that leaders are selected during times of turmoil because of their military experiences, or that the same factors that lead to their selection also lead to militarized disputes.
*To ensure prior domestic turmoil was not driving the result, a variable measuring whether or not the country had been involved in a civil war over the previous five years was added.
*To account for this possibility, an additional model based on Model 1 in Table 1 was controlled for rebel selection in three ways.

Conclusion

This article develops a novel argument about the background experiences of leaders and tests it on a new data set covering the background experiences of more than 2,500 heads of state from 1875 to 2004.
Prior military experience and prior combat experience condition the way leaders view the use of force, making it crucial to understand how that experience explains the initiation and escalation of military force in general.
There are several potential extensions for this research agenda. This study focuses on the link between background experiences and risk experience, rather than actual leader competence, but that is one promising way forward for the future.
We can also build on recent work on leader selection to examine this more completely and the types of background experiences that make leader selection more likely across different types of regimes.
Finally, there are several other potential relationships between leader backgrounds and policy choices, such as occupational backgrounds and economic policy choices, as well as upbringing and social welfare choices, that represent potentially fruitful areas for further research.

The article explores how leaders' personal experiences, particularly military backgrounds, influence their policy choices and behavior in relation to military action. It posits that leaders with prior military service, especially those without combat experience, are more likely to engage in militarized disputes. The study leverages a dataset covering over 2,500 heads of state from 1875 to 2004 to empirically examine these claims.

Key Ideas:

Influence of Background: Policymakers often believe that personal experiences of political executives shape their decision-making in policy areas, including military engagements.
Military Service Impact: Leaders with military service but no combat experience are theorized to be more inclined towards conflict due to their familiarity with military operations without understanding the risks involved.
Role of Rebel Experience: Former rebels tend to be more risk-acceptant, making them more likely to initiate militarized disputes when they become heads of state.
Institutional Context: Domestic political institutions affect how leaders utilize their backgrounds. For instance, in autocratic regimes, leaders with combat experience may be more aggressive due to their socialization within a military context.
Behavioral Theories: The article draws from psychological and sociological theories to argue that life experiences, particularly significant experiences during formative years, have lasting impacts on leaders’ behavior.
Research Design: The study utilizes various coding for military experience and analyzes the initiation of militarized disputes, controlling for factors such as previous conflicts and regime types.
Statistical Findings: Results showcase that leaders with prior military service initiate disputes at higher rates compared to those without, with rebel experience amplifying this tendency.
Addressing Endogeneity: The research considers the potential endogeneity between leader selection and militarized conflict, ensuring robustness in findings by controlling for prior conflicts.

Summary: The article presents a crucial perspective on the significance of leaders' backgrounds, particularly military and rebel experiences, in shaping their propensity to engage in military conflicts. By analyzing an extensive dataset, the research underscores the impact of these experiences on international relations and advocates for further exploration into how varied backgrounds among leaders can inform policy choices beyond military actions