8 Although organized militaries, capable of collective action, are more effective in conflicts with regime opponents, they also pose greater threats to leaders themselves. Leaders who are more fearful of coup threats than of attacks by regime opponents are therefore more likely to make decisions that lead to military disorganization. These decisions can take many forms.

One is to starve the armed forces of resources. Previous research has emphasized access to resources as the key to military effectiveness, to meet the usual requirements of salaries, supplies and weapons. Consistent with this emphasis, military dysfunction and low salaries seem to go together. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, salaries of top officers in the army, known for its ineffectiveness, were approximately US$80 per month (International Crisis Group 2006, pp. 5, 11). However, under-funding may not signal the leader‟s lack of resources, as the literature emphasizes. Instead, it could result from the leader‟s reluctance to fund a potential coup threat. In the DRC, although resources were not available for army offices, ministers‟ salaries approached US$4,000 per month.

Leaders concerned about coup threats can also create separate and competing security forces and prevent them from cooperating with one another. De Atkine (1999) reports that joint commands and exercises are rare in many Middle Eastern militaries and efforts by one branch of the military to secure the assistance of another (for example, if an army wishes to obtain aircraft from an air force for army airborne training), must be coordinated by heads of services at the ministry level, and likely requires presidential approval.

Sadaam Hussein‟s management of the Iraqi armed forces provides the most extreme example of this. Hashim (2003) summarizes his discussion of Hussein‟s policy throughout his rule to rotate officers, to replace even successful officers with incompetent loyalists, and to establish competing armed forces, even at substantial cost to military readiness. “Even though Iraq faced a higher threat environment in the 1990s vis à vis both external and internal threats, in [Saddam Hussein‟s] mind it was the most proximate force to him, the Iraqi military, which continued to represent the gravest threat” (p. 14).

The DRC military was also divided. In 2006, the army was 140,000 strong and poorly funded, but the Presidential Guard, with the sole purpose of protecting the president, had 12,000 soldiers and was relatively well-funded. In July 2006, for example, 42 tanks and armored vehicles were officially delivered to the Congolese army, but only the Presidential Guard had forces trained to use them ( _Oxford Analytica_ (2006); “Congo-Kinshasa: Historic poll not end of transition,” October 27).

Another way to inhibit intra-military coordination is to prohibit information-sharing across military units.<sup>5</sup> Focusing on armies in the Arabic countries of the Middle East, De Atkine (1999) indicates that within-military flows of information are tightly restricted, another indication of limitations on collective action. In particular, promotions, transfers, names of unit commanders, and unit designations are all frequently classified. Observers also find that leaders in the region prevent independent collective action within the military

> 5 As Gehlbach and Keefer, 2009 demonstrate, limits on information flows are a significant obstacle to collective action within ruling parties

assurance that leaders will not pursue goals that are incompatible with those objectives; collective organization is again important.