Explaining Budgetary Trends in Military Regimes

Abstract

The conventional literature on the military generally believes that military, non-competitive regimes have a tendency to spend more for national-security purposes and less on welfare provision. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate why do Argentina and Brazil, military non-competitive regimes, have tendencies similar to those of Western democracies where the state’s economic expansion extends beyond that required by strictly economic considerations?

In contrast to the rational-comprehensive or ‘technocratic’ model which is often assumed to predominate in bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes an analysis of social and economic policies in Brazil and Argentina highlights the essentially political nature of the policy process in non-democratic regimes.