Secrecy and military expenditures in the Russian budget

Bibliographic Data

ID6357751
AuthorsErik Andermo (Swedish Institute of International Affairs), Martin Kragh (0000-0002-1917-0136, Swedish Institute of International Affairs, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume36
Issue4
Pages297-322
Publication date2020-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePost-Soviet Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1060-586X • E-ISSN: 1938-2855
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1060586x.2020.1738816
OpenAlexW3014002343
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited19

This article proposes a transparent method for collecting, structuring, and analyzing Russian budget data on defense and security-related expenditures. A precise answer to the question of how big Russia’s defense expenditures are is impossible because of issues concerning secrecy and accounting principles. We circumvent this challenge by constructing lower and upper bounds for Russia’s military expenditure, showing that depending on the chosen measure these have increased from the range of 10.3–31.2% of federal expenditures in 2011 to 12.9–35.4% in 2018. The analysis also yields additional insights into the concept of secrecy in the Russian budget; we show that 39 out of 96 subchapters in the Russian budget contain secret expenditures, many of which are not nominally related to defense or security, and that secret expenditures increased as a share of total expenditures from 12% to 17% between 2011 and 2019

Business · Computer security · Economics · Federal budget · Fiscal year · Political science · Public economics · Secrecy · Structuring · Computer Science · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies · European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies · Law · Russia and Soviet political economy