Military spending, institutional stability and fiscal capacity. Spain in comparative perspective (1850-2009)

The thesis offers a new database of military expense in Spain from middle of the century nineteen up to the current importance, as well as three analyses of the determining ones and the economic and political consequences of the military expense in the long term. In I make concrete, the first chapter presents new estimations of the public resources destined for the military area in Spain from 1850 until 2009, as well as the economic, administrative and functional disaggregation of the above mentioned expense. The new database has been elaborated following the methodological criterion of the OTAN, which is one of the criteria most used on the part of the international institutions dedicated to the compilation of information of military expense worldwide. The above mentioned criterion allows to obtain a new database throughout the time and comparably with other countries of the European and international environment. The second chapter of the thesis analyzes the influence of the political rate in the evolution of the military expense in Spain from beginning of the Spanish Restoration up to the current importance. In contrast with the previous quantitative analyses, which generally emphasize the negative influence of the democratic rate in the evolution of the military expense, the chapter suggests that the democratic institutions can be associated with major levels of military expense in certain historical contexts. In I make concrete, the analysis of points of break of the series of military expense, as well as the analyses econometrics subsequent and the review of the military Spanish historiography, it shows that the first democratic governments established after the Pro-Franco dictatorship increased significantly the military expense in relation with the previous decades. This increase, which was due to the efforts of the above mentioned governments to re-orientate the army towards international missions and to facilitate his adjustment to the new democratic institutions, gave place to the only positive point of break of the historical series of military total expense that does not guard relation with the beginning or the end of a warlike conflict. In turn, the analysis suggests that the new orientation of the military democratic policies carried a financial effort in favor of an intensive army in the capital that could take part in new missions international. The third chapter analyzes more thoroughly the determining politicians of the military expense and his potential I affect terms of institutional stability. Since it is known well, the armies have intervened suddenly in politics coups d'etat. Diverse authors suggest that the autocratic or partially democratic governments have used eventually the military expense as strategy to satisfy to the armed forces and to avoid this way his insubordination. Nonetheless, and in spite of the solidity of the argument, the quantitative recent analyses based on wide international databases have not found a significant and conclusive relation between the evolution of the military expense and the frequency and the success of the coups d'etat. In this third chapter I suggest that the military total expense - measured commonly used on the part of the above mentioned quantitative literature - cannot be a good indicator of the financial effort realized on the part of the governments to obtain the loyalty of the army. Though the military total expense does not reflect any relation with the frequency and the success of the coups d'etat, it is possible that the changes in the composition of the expense yes that guard a significant relation with the above mentioned phenomenon. The chapter tries to open this ' black box ' of the military expense studying the impact of the evolution of the wage remuneration of the officials in Spain from middle of the century nineteen until ends of the Spanish Restoration. On line with the pointed hypothesis, the analysis suggests that the increases in the remuneration of the officials during the second half of the century nineteen and beginning of the century twenty - together with other political and military strategies - they are related to a minor frequency of coups d'etat, whereas the military total expense does not seem to show any relation in the matter. Finally, the fourth chapter examines the impact of the war and the military expense in the evolution of the fiscal systems of a sample of thirteen European and North American countries in the long term. The war and the military competition have been defined often as forces relevant motorboats of the expansion of the fiscal capacity of the conditions during the contemporary epoch. Nonetheless, the empirical evidence has not been conclusive, and still one lacks a historical narrative that explains how the changes in the nature of the war they have concerned the evolution of the fiscal contemporary systems. The fourth chapter has as aim refill this emptiness by means of the analysis of the impact of the war in the evolution of the fiscal contemporary capacity in the light of so called ' Revolutions of the Military Matters ' that took place in west from middle of the century nineteen up to the current importance. The results suggest that the relation between the war and the fiscal expansion has followed a curve of Or invested, according to which the changes in the tactics and the military technology pressed the public resources to the rise until the destructive capacity of the armies exceeded the nuclear threshold. Additional, the results suggest that the political systems have been relevant to complete this historical narrative, though they have been in occasions forgotten in this type of analysis.