Kim Jong-il’s military-first politics and beyond: Military control mechanisms and the problem of power succession

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jongseok Woo
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Regime Stability ◽  
Kim Jong Il ◽  
Military Control ◽  
The Military ◽  
Power Succession

Military-first politics has been at the heart of the unexpected regime stability in North Korea under Kim Jong-il and his son Jong-un. This article analyzes Kim Jong-il’s military-first politics as a strategic choice for regime survival, in which the locus of political power switched from the party to the military. At the same time, Kim Jong-il formulated a complex system of circumventing the possibility of the armed forces’ political domination, including personalistic control using sticks and carrots, fortifying security and surveillance institutions, and compartmentalizing the security institutions for intra- and inter-organizational checks and balances to prevent the emergence of organized opposition to the regime. Although an effective short-term solution, military-first politics could never be a long-term strategy for building gangseongdaeguk (a powerful and prosperous nation). The current Kim Jong-un regime needs to conduct sweeping reforms to address dire economic difficulties, which might result in a departure from his father’s legacy and downgrade the military’s power. In this process, the current regime’s (in)stability will depend on how it maintains a balance between revoking military-first politics and preserving the armed forces’ allegiance.

Defining the Nature and Future of the Party–Military Relations in North Korea

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jongseok Woo
Keyword(s):  
North Korea ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Kim Jong Il ◽  
Military Control ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military ◽  
Near Future

Since Kim Jong-il officially launched his Songun politics in 1998, conflicting assessments have generated two competing arguments regarding the political role of the Korean People’s Army (KPA). The military garrison state argument suggests that Songun politics brought about the decline of the party and political ascendance of the military, while the party’s army model argues that the KPA is still the party’s army and under the party’s firm control. This article suggests that the debate mischaracterizes the KPA’s political place in North Korea and that the military has not been a politically influential organ from the state-building to the current Kim Jong-un era. This article identifies two distinct patterns of military control mechanisms—namely partisan (1960s–1990s) and personalistic (1998–2008)—and argues that the different control methods have little to do with the KPA’s political strength or weakness. Rather, they merely reflect the dictator’s ruling method of choice for regime survival. The analysis illustrates that the current Kim Jong-un regime is more stable than many outside observers may estimate, and a military coup is highly unlikely in the near future.

Performance of a mobile infrasound station in the framework of CEEIN 

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Mitterbauer ◽  
Daniela Ghica
Keyword(s):  
Military Training ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
National Data ◽  
Private Company ◽  
Seismic Sensors ◽  
Global Events ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Military

<p>The project ABC-MAUS is undertaken by a collaboration of the Austrian Ministry of Defense, Joanneum Research, the Austrian national weather and geophysical service Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG), including the Austrian National Data Center (NDC), as well as the private company GIHMM. The aim is to develop a strategy of protection for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threads (CBRN) for the Austrian armed forces.</p><p>In the frame of the project, a mobile infrasound array was deployed together with seismic sensors to monitor the military training ground Allentsteig in Lower Austria. During one week a series of controlled explosions was recorded. Infrasound data was processed and analyzed by using a duo of infrasound detection-oriented software (DTK-GPMCC and DTK-DIVA, packaged into NDC-in-a-Box). The dataset contained not only local and regional data, but revealed as well long term sources and – after comparing the data with data from stations of the CEEIN (Central Eastern European Infrasound Network) – some global events. Those events were localized using data of the temporary deployed array and by observations collected by other stations of the CEEIN.</p>

Presidential Term Limits as a Credible-Commitment Mechanism

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Octavio Amorim Neto ◽  
Igor P. Acácio
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Term Limits ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Credible Commitment ◽  
Chief Executives ◽  
Regime Stability ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Military

Contra the conventional wisdom that term limits are meaningless in dictatorships, Brazil’s military regime developed term-limits for its chief executives and managed a durable political order. This chapter argue that term limits moderated intra-elite conflicts, thus contributing to regime stability. Term limits were key to reconcile two warring factions within the armed forces. The authors see term limits as a credible-commitment mechanism. Three elements are jointly sufficient to explain the adoption of term limits: (1) the armed forces’ decision in 1964 to part ways with the decades-old pattern of episodic, short political interventions and stay in office for the long haul; (2) a legalist tradition that led the new regime to keep a façade of constitutionalism through a myriad of political institutions; and (3) the ideological and political cleavages within the armed forces. We corroborate our arguments using a new dataset of tension events between the military and the government in 1946–85.

Complicating Entanglements: Societal Factors Intruding in the Ghana Armed Forces’ Civil–Military Relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2110330
Author(s):  
Humphrey A. Agyekum
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Societal Factors ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
Military Institution ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Scholarly debates on civil–military relations often focus on how the military impacts society. Adding to the vast literature of civil–military relations, this article examines how socio-cultural practices and societal developments in the host society affect the military. Based on long-term ethnographic engagement with the Ghana Armed Forces, the piece presents empirical observations of how culturally informed practices, such as begging via proxies ( djuan toa), infiltrate the Ghanaian military barracks and affect the institutions’ functioning. The article illustrates how two additional elements, skewed recruitment practices and the politicisation of the rank and file, are used as tools by political factions, such as Ghana’s two most prominent parties the New Patriotic Party and National Democratic Congress, seeking to gain control over the Ghanaian military. The article analyses how these approaches contribute to undermining the armed forces’ discipline and military professionalism and consequently affect the military institution as a whole.

Interactions between short-term and long-term cardiovascular control mechanisms

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 015110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Hoyer ◽  
Birgit Frank ◽  
Christine Götze ◽  
Phyllis K. Stein ◽  
Jan J. Żebrowski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cardiovascular Control ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Short Term

scholarly journals DO DEMOCRACIES SPEND LESS ON THE MILITARY? SPAIN AS A LONG-TERM CASE STUDY (1876-2009)

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oriol Sabaté
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Military Spending ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Military Expenditure ◽  
Negative Relation ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Military ◽  
Capital Intensive

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the influence of political regimes on the level and economic composition of military expenditure in Spain over the long run. In contrast with the widely accepted negative relation between democracy and military spending, the paper suggests that democratic governments established in the late 1970s and early 1980s after Franco’s dictatorship had a positive influence on the military burden owing to the efforts to reorient the army towards international threats and to involve the armed forces with the newly democratic institutions. In addition, the analysis of military expenditure allows us to conclude that the international orientation of democratic military policies took place along with financial efforts to obtain a capital-intensive army to confront international military threats.

How ‘unique’ should the military be?: A review of representative literature & outline of a synthetic formulation

1990 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Boëne
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Life ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military ◽  
Number Of Authors

Central to the study of ‘armed forces and society’, whether the approach be that of sociology, political science or legal doctrine, is the question of how unique the military really is—and ought to be. Over the last four decades or so, a number of authors have evinced keen interest in, and written more or less extensively on such matters as the objective, normative and subjective dimensions of military life, functional, structural and cultural features of military organization, civil-military relations, and the patterns of long-term change affecting them.

scholarly journals The militarization of responses to COVID-19 in Democratic Latin America

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-272
Author(s):  
Anaís Medeiros Passos ◽  
Igor Acácio
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Balance

Abstract Latin America has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting its governments to take action. In this context, countries within Latin America have used their armed forces for an array of tasks to serve citizens. But how militarized is the response to COVID-19 in Latin America? This paper proposes a typology of tasks provided by the armed forces as a response to COVID-19. The descriptive findings allow us to map these tasks, attributing scores to the fourteen Latin American democracies. We also show evidence for the potential consequences of some tasks. Policing the streets to enforce stay-at-home orders may lead to the military committing human rights violations, assuming eminently civilian posts to manage the public health crisis can result in long term implications for the civil-military balance that are detrimental to the democratic control over the military.

scholarly journals Armies and Ecosystems in Premodern Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Govaerts
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Impact ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Environmental Footprint ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Military

Using the ecosystem concept as his starting point, the author examines the complex relationship between premodern armed forces and their environment at three levels: landscapes, living beings, and diseases. The study focuses on Europe’s Meuse Region, well-known among historians of war as a battleground between France and Germany. By analyzing soldiers’ long-term interactions with nature, this book engages with current debates about the ecological impact of the military, and provides new impetus for contemporary armed forces to make greater effort to reduce their environmental footprint.

scholarly journals Armies and Ecosystems in Premodern Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Govaerts
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Impact ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Environmental Footprint ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Military

Using the ecosystem concept as his starting point, the author examines the complex relationship between premodern armed forces and their environment at three levels: landscapes, living beings, and diseases. The study focuses on Europe's Meuse Region, well-known among historians of war as a battleground between France and Germany. By analyzing soldiers' long-term interactions with nature, this book engages with current debates about the ecological impact of the military, and provides new impetus for contemporary armed forces to make greater effort to reduce their environmental footprint.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document