Galbraith’s Social Imbalance and Human Security

Abstract

This paper revisits John Kenneth Galbraith's theory of social balance and evaluates its implications for human security. Using a panel data of 120 countries over 1990-2020, the paper proxies social balance by the public-to-private spending ratio and measures human security with the Human Security Index (HSI) and its two pillars, freedom from want (HSIW) and freedom from fear (HSIF). Country fixed-effects estimations show a robust inverse-U: human security rises as the public share increases from low levels but declines once the state becomes dominant. Democracy, openness, and tax capacity are positively associated with HSI, while militarization has a negative effect. Decomposition reveals that the aggregate pattern is driven chiefly by HSIW, whereas HSIF is more sensitive to democracy and military spending. The findings support a Galbraithian view that human security is maximized at moderate public shares in accountable, non-militarized settings.