Abstract
We study why subordinates followed their leaders in the Spanish Coup of 1936. We find that the 1936 chain of command was widely broken, but subordinates followed their former leaders. Officers who had served under rebel leaders before 1936 were thirteen percentage points more likely to join the rebellion. Our identification strategy exploits rotation among military leaders to compare officers exposed to rebel leaders to their peers who served in the same posting a few years before or after. We show that our control and treatment samples are balanced in many covariates and that our findings are not driven by selection. We also study the mechanisms behind our results, ruling out indoctrination and finding support for leaders as coordination devices and for career concerns.

Marcos Manuel Salgado es profesor asistente en FGV EPGE en Rio de Janeiro, graduado del doctorado en Political Economics de Stanford GSB, antes graduado de la maestria en Economía y la licenciatura en Ciencia Política de UdeSA. Sus areas de investigacion incluyen Economía Política, Historia Económica y Economía de las Organizaciones.