Military Coups and Military Régimes in Africa

1973 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Decalo
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Composition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Intense Debate

In the past several years there has been a proliferation of studies on coup d'états in Africa and the political role of African military structures. Armies have been analysed in terms of their social and ethnic composition, training, ideology, and socialising influences. Intense debate has focused around the overt and covert reasons for their intervention in the political arena. Simple and complex typologies of civil–military relations and of military coups have been constructed; statistical data – both hard and soft – has been marshalled and subjected to factor and regression analysis, in order to validate general or middle-range theories of military intervention. And once in power, the officer corps' performance has been examined in order to generate insights into its propensity to serve as a modernising or developmental agent.

scholarly journals Praetorian Army in Action: A Critical Assessment of Civil–Military Relations in Turkey

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-222
Author(s):  
Berk Esen
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Military Relations

With four successful and three failed coups in less than 60 years, the Turkish military is one of the most interventionist armed forces in the global south. Despite this record, few scholars have analyzed systematically how the military’s political role changed over time. To address this gap, this article examines the evolution of civil–military relations (CMR) in Turkey throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Based on a historical analysis, this article offers a revisionist account for the extant Turkish scholarship and also contributes to the broader literature on CMR. It argues that the military’s guardian status was not clearly defined and that the officer corps differed strongly on major political issues throughout the Cold War. This article also demonstrates that the officer corps was divided into opposite ideological factions and political agendas and enjoyed varying levels of political influence due to frequent purges and conjectural changes.

Collective Democratic Control of the Armed Forces

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ye Phone Kyaw
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Constitutional Government ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
National League ◽  
The Right ◽  
Military Relations

Under its 2008 Constitution, Myanmar is undergoing a political transition from a military regime to a more liberalized democratic and constitutional government. The current National League for Democracy government’s reforms are in stagnation, while debates on the political role of the Tatmadaw (the Myanmar military) as guaranteed by the 2008 Constitution continue. A widespread perception persists that civil-military relations in Myanmar lack civilian control and are a barrier to the reform processes. Such assumptions, however, are made in the absence of theoretical analysis. This article will argue that Myanmar’s constitutional government has the right to establish “democratic control,” while the Tatmadaw’s national political role remains significant. Democratic control of Myanmar’s civil-military relations is based on a “collective” rather than a “confrontational” approach—one that is called “collective democratic control.” The current stagnation in reform and in the national reconciliation process are the result of a lack of understanding of the existing structure of civil-military relations, rather than a lack of democratic control of the armed forces.

The Democratizer Army Paradox: The Role of the Algerian Army in Impeded Democratization

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (7) ◽  
pp. 1033-1047
Author(s):  
Furkan Halit Yolcu
Keyword(s):  
Process Tracing ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

The main paradox of the civil–military relations theory has been the protection of the political sphere from the military, which is administered by the politicians. The new dilemma lies under the paradox that occurs when the political sphere is entirely co-opted by the military, which is legitimized through democratization instead of protection of the civilian sphere. The question regarding the continuity of the pathology, the military superiority over the civil administration, has been largely omitted. This study is an attempt to respond to this conundrum related to the continuity of pathological civil–military relations. The main focus is the pathology that occurs when the military is the modernizer or the democratizer in a country. The study uses process tracing to collect the data as research attempts to unravel the rationale behind the continuity of military dominance in politics. In doing so, it will attempt to trace the causality between the lack of democratization and military dominance over politics in the case of Algeria.

Iraq: Civil-Military Relations from the Monarchy to the Republics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed S. Hashim
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Saddam Hussein ◽  
Military Relations

Iraq is a young state, having been founded in 1921 by a colonial power, Britain. Its army was created several months beforehand, with its nucleus being Iraqi Sunni Arab officers of the former Ottoman army. As the mandate power in Iraq, Britain wanted a small internal security establishment while the officer corps and the monarchy wanted a large army that would act as a nation-building institution to make Iraqis out of the disparate ethnic groups who found themselves reluctant subjects of this new entity. As the strongest institution in the fragile state, the army played an important role in the political process and ultimately launched the first coup in the Arab world in 1936. As the older and more pliant senior officer corps retired, younger, more nationalist officers came to the fore; they were discontented with the overbearing presence of the British, the rampant cronyism and corruption in the royal court and among the ruling elite, and by the backwardness of their country. A small group of militant nationalist officers seized power and fought a brief and unsuccessful war against Britain. The power of the ruling elite was seemingly consolidated in the period after World War II. Both Iraq and the rest of the Middle East were in turmoil as colonial powers found themselves facing a rising tide of movements striving for independence. Leading the way were junior and middle-ranking officers, and in Iraq they launched a bloody coup-revolution in 1958 that destroyed the monarchy and established a republic. The Iraqi republic was unstable, due mostly to the inability of elites to establish solid institutions for governing the country and channeling mass politics effectively. The fragility and lack of legitimacy of governments provided ample opportunity for the military—which was riven by factionalism and ideological differences—to intervene regularly in the political process. The seizure of power by the nationalist and socialist Baath Party under Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein effectively put an end to the military’s political role; the Baath Party implemented a series of stringent “coup-proofing” measures between 1968 and 2003 when it was displaced from power by the U.S. invasion. The Baath Party’s measures did not mean that members of the officer corps did not try their hand at overthrowing the Baath regime; many did, but all failed, often at tremendous costs to themselves and their families. The measures of control had a deleterious effect on the professionalism and combat performance in the conventional wars that it fought between 1980 and 2003. The Americans tried to build a new Iraqi army and sought to professionalize it, but their efforts had little success. The removal of the brutal authoritarian regime of Saddam Hussein did not change Iraqi politics for the better. Sunni Arab dominance was replaced by Shia Arab dominance. Post-Baath governments were kleptocratic, corrupt, and characterized by ethno-sectarian favoritism and cronyism. These characteristics pervaded the new military itself but the military’s ability to interfere in the political process has been stymied by its focus on fighting the dangerous jihadist fighters of the Islamic State (Daesh), the proliferation of government security services, and by the emergence of heavily armed and motivated pro-government militias. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Something Gleaming

Theoria ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (165) ◽  
pp. 92-117
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Leebaw
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
The Way

What kinds of lessons can be learned from stories of those who resisted past abuses and injustices? How should such stories be recovered, and what do they have to teach us about present day struggles for justice and accountability? This paper investigates how Levi, Broz, and Arendt formulate the political role of storytelling as response to distinctive challenges associated with efforts to resist systematic forms of abuse and injustice. It focuses on how these thinkers reflected on such themes as witnesses, who were personally affected, to varying degrees, by atrocities under investigation. Despite their differences, these thinkers share a common concern with the way that organised atrocities are associated with systemic logics and grey zones that make people feel that it would be meaningless or futile to resist. To confront such challenges, Levi, Arendt and Broz all suggest, it is important to recover stories of resistance that are not usually heard or told in ways that defy the expectations of public audiences. Their distinctive storytelling strategies are not rooted in clashing theories of resistance, but rather reflect different perspectives on what is needed to make resistance meaningful in contexts where the failure of resistance is intolerable.

Moral Victories

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Theory Of War ◽  
Military Relations

What does it mean to win a moral victory? In the history, practice, and theory of war, this question yields few clear answers. Wars often begin with ideals about just and decisive triumphs but descend into quagmires. In the just war and strategic studies traditions, assumptions about victory underpin legitimations for war but become problematic in discussions about its conduct and conclusion. After centuries of conflict, we still lack a clear understanding of victory or reliable resources for discerning its moral status, its implications for conduct in war, or its relationship to changing ways of war. This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to tackle such issues. It is organized in two parts. After a synoptic introduction, Part I, ‘Traditions: The Changing Character of Victory’, charts the historically variable notion of victory and the dialogues and fissures this opens in the just war and strategic canons. Individual chapters analyse the importance of victory in the Bible, Clausewitz’s strategy, the political uses of defeat, arguments for unlimited war, revisionist just war theory, and contemporary norms against fights to the finish. Part II, ‘Challenges: The Problem of Victory in Contemporary Warfare’, shows how changing security contexts exacerbate these issues. Individual chapters discuss ethics in unwinnable wars, the political scars of victory, whether we can ‘win’ humanitarian interventions, contemporary civil–military relations, victory in privatized war, and operations short of war. In both parts, contributors work towards a clearer understanding of victory, forwarding several shared themes discussed in a critical conclusion.

II. The Political Role of the Parlement of Paris, 1715–23

1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200
Author(s):  
J. H. Shennan
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Legal Structure ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Parlement Of Paris

The most recent biographer of Montesquieu has written:…the similarity between the ideas of the former president a tnortier and those of the parlements is sometimes striking.…The king, they admit, is the legislator and the fount of justice. The parlements, however, are the repositories of his supreme juris-diction. To remove it from them is to offend the laws of the state and to overthrow the ancient legal structure of the kingdom.…This tradition of the parlements inspired and was inspired by the political doctrine of Montesquieu; and when the President writes of the monarchy of his own day…as being the best form of government that men have been able to imagine, it is monarchy supported by this tradition which he has in mind.

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