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In some modern conflicts, stronger militaries have displayed poor performance in conflicts, as evidenced by slow military offensives, high battlefield casualty rates, failure to secure planned objectives and defeat in the war. Poor conflict performance, in these cases, is attributed to material and certain non-material state characteristics such as regime type, economic development, and ideology. Current explanations of conflict performance, however, have yet to integrate empirical evidence identifying another state characteristic as a negative influence on state capacity: corruption. To address this gap, we identify direct and indirect theoretical channels by which state-level corruption impacts conflict performance. Corruption decreases the war material available to troops on the ground and negatively impacts strategic decision-making by commanders. An analysis of states in interstate conflicts from 1816 to 1990 confirms the relationship between corruption and several measures of conflict performance. Case evidence from the First Russian-Chechen War is used to illustrate the mechanisms of our argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mercenaries play an increasingly important role in international and domestic security. Why do leaders hire mercenaries? We argue that leaders employ private military organizations to guard against the risk of coups, but only when these leaders have weak ties to the international community. While mercenaries can diffuse domestic military capacity, an essential coup-proofing function, they also put some leaders at risk of international opprobrium given strong norms against their use. We find support for our theory across countries and over time: Leaders with high coup risk and low international accountability are especially likely to hire mercenaries. Our theory and findings provide unique insight into the importance of private military organizations for domestic security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]