Escribà-Folch, AbelFaulkner, ChristopherMehrl, Marius2025-10-062025-10-062025Escribà-Folch A, Faulkner C, Mehrl M. Foreign legionnaires and military mutinies. Journal of Global Security Studies. 2025 Jun;10(2):ogaf001. DOI: 10.1093/jogss/ogaf0012057-3170http://hdl.handle.net/10230/71375The composition of the armed forces is, by now, well established as a major factor determining the risk of coups d’état. However, military discontent not only manifests in the form of coups but also as mutinies. This latter form of troop rebellion has received little empirical attention. We examine how the practice of recruiting foreigners into the armed forces affects the likelihood of such events and develop two arguments regarding a direct and a moderating effect of legionnaires on mutiny risk. First, we contend that the recruitment of legionnaires is likely to cause material-based grievances, hence be perceived as detrimental to the corporate interests, wages, and promotion prospects of the rank-and-file, and thus troops will oppose the introduction of such recruitment policies. We hence expect the onset of legionnaire recruitment policies to be associated with an increased risk of mutinies. However, once such policies are in place, the presence of legionnaires can mitigate the effects of other mutiny drivers as foreign recruits impede local soldiers’ task-related grievances and thus incentives to mutiny in reaction to them. Using global data over the period 1948–2015, we find empirical support for the expectations derived from both arguments.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) (2025). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogaf001Foreign recruitmentCivil–military relationsMutinyLegionnairesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess