Solving the guardianship dilemma by war
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09516298211043235 |
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Original Research Articles |
Solving the guardianship
dilemma by war
Jacque Gao
Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, USA.
Abstract
This article develops a new theory of how dictators can solve the guardianship dilemma. I study a
dynamic game to show that the dictator may build a large army and deal with the guardianship
dilemma by resorting to international conflicts. Specifically, when a military revolt is imminent,
the dictator can obtain enough resources to buy off the military by attacking and ultimately defeat-
ing his international opponent. The framework thus shows that a weakly institutionalized polity
may either have a small military or have a large military and be more aggressive on the interna-
tional stage.
Keywords
Diversionary war, dynamic game, gambling for resurrection, guardianship dilemma
1 Introduction
Dictators frequently contend with foreign opponents for resources and territories. Thus,
they must rely on coercive force in the form of a military to cope with these challenges.
However, a military strong enough to protect the government is also strong enough to
overthrow it, creating the ‘guardianship dilemma’for dictators. The guardianship
dilemma has been a tough challenge for dictators for centuries. Indeed, even in the last
century, ‘militaries deposed more rulers than all other forms of political instability com-
bined’(McMahon and Slantchev 2015, 298).
The existing literature argues that dictators can deal with the guardianship dilemma by
either creating a strong military and gambling that they will not turn on him or avoiding
that danger altogether by leaving himself exposed to the external threat
1
(Acemoglu et al.
Corresponding author:
Jacque Gao, Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, 280 Hutchison Road, Rochester,
New York, 14620, USA.
Email: ang.gao@rochester.edu
Original Research Article
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2021, Vol. 33(4) 455–474
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/09516298211043235
journals.sagepub.com/home/jtp
2010; Besley and Robinson 2010; Svolik 2012; McMahon and Slantchev 2015). This
article studies the third alternative that the literature has not previously assessed: the dic-
tator can overcome the guardianship dilemma by initiating an international conflict.
Specifically, when a military revolt is imminent, the dictator can obtain enough resources
to buy off the military by attacking and ultimately defeating his international opponent. In
doing so, the paper also offers an additional channel through which the dictator ‘gambles
for resurrection’(Downs and Rocke 1994; Smith 1996; Chiozza and Goemans 2011).
The core mechanism of the theory in this article builds on a simple dynamic game à la
Acemoglu and Robinson (2005). The government is controlled by a dictator, who derives
rents from holding power and consuming the resources he owns. A foreign challenger
arises in each period to contest with the dictator over the resources he possesses.
A weak military can only help the dictator obtain a small fraction of the resources
from bargaining with the foreign challenger. Alternatively, the dictator can build a stron-
ger army, which can help him obtain more from the foreign challenger, but this will also
increase the ability of the military to overthrow the dictator. The dictator–military inter-
action is complicated by the fact that the dictator cannot credibly commit to sharing with
the military the resources he obtained from international bargaining. Consequently, a
stronger military, which is necessary for obtaining more resources from the foreign chal-
lenger, may attempt a coup. Thus, the dictator faces a choice between obtaining less from
the foreign challenger versus the risk of a coup. More importantly, given the dictator’s
inability to commit in the future, the resources the dictator obtains from peaceful bargain-
ing may not be sufficient to retain the military’s support.
However, the framework points out another way out for the dictator: To obtain suffi-
cient resources to buy off the strong military by defeating the international opponent.
Thus, the result suggests that a weakly institutionalized polity may either have a small
military or have a large military and be more aggressive on the international stage. In
other words, the guardianship dilemma can be solved by war.
A close examination of two cases from different historical periods sheds further light
on the theory and demonstrates that the theory applies to both historical and modern inter-
national conflicts. In the first French Empire, the necessity of retaining the military’s
support pushed Napoleon to fight constant wars, because obtaining the war loot was
the only way for him to reward his generals and retain their compliance. Similarly,
Saddam started the first Gulf War with the intention of using Kuwait’s fabulous wealth
to retain the military’s support and ultimately ensure his own personal survival.
1.1 Related literature
The paper closely relates to the literature on the guardianship dilemma, namely, stronger
external threats increase the need for a powerful military, but a powerful military may
also endanger the regime’s survival (Finer 1988; Feaver 1999; Besley and Robinson
2010). At one extreme, it could deprive the state of a military altogether, as it has
done in Costa Rica. At the other extreme, it could induce the dictator to create a mass
army despite the fear of a mass revolt (Andrzejewski,1954; Posen,1993), as in Iraq
before the first Gulf War. Other strategies to weaken the military and reduce the possibi-
lity of a coup also exist, the most important of which is to control the membership of the
456 Journal of Theoretical Politics 33(4)
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