Egypt and Tunisia: Political Control of the Military Under Mubarak and Ben Ali

Author(s):  
Risa A. Brooks

Civil–military relations varied dramatically in Egypt and Tunisia under their former dictators, Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abedine Ben Ali. The leaders relied on alternative strategies of political control to accommodate the military to their rule and maintain themselves in office. Mubarak forged a grand bargain with his senior officers, while Ben Ali sought to contain the military. These strategies had important implications for how they met the imperatives of autocratic civil–military relations—keeping the military from engaging in coups and ensuring it would defend them against societal opponents, while retaining the latitude to govern. The cases illustrate the importance of studying variation in patterns of civil–military relations independently of regime type and of examining the overarching logics through which political leaders control the military.

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Kohn

Arguments in favor of the topmost senior officers exercising “principled resignation” in opposition to policies, decisions, or orders that they find immoral, unethical, or disastrous for the country weaken the military profession and endanger American national security. A member of the Joint Chiefs, a combatant commander, or a topmost war commander who “resigns” would be injecting themselves improperly into a policy role, opposing civilian authority, and undermining civilian control of the military. The act would be politicizing for the military and likely fail to change what the officer opposes. Most importantly, their act of personal conscience would poison civil–military relations long into the future; civilian trust in military subordinates not to undermine support for policies and decisions with the public and other political leaders would decline. Even more than today, they would choose their senior military leaders for compatibility and agreement above other traits.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002234332096637
Author(s):  
Jun Koga Sudduth

The principal threat most autocratic leaders face stems from within the regime. To control militaries and mitigate the risk of coups d’état, many autocratic leaders repeatedly purge strong officers from the military. What are the causes and consequences of such purges? Despite its importance, scholars rarely have studied the question, as they have lacked a systematic and comprehensive dataset. The Military Purges in Dictatorships (MPD) dataset contains information on the dates and characteristics of 1,007 military purges, and covers 566 political leaders in 116 authoritarian countries over the period 1965 to 2005. In this article, I describe MPD, compare it with other datasets, present descriptive statistics on the data, and suggest its applications. By coding the timing and various characteristics of military purges, MPD facilitates empirical study of the relationships between autocratic leaders and their militaries, and thus is useful for researchers studying political violence, repression, civil-military relations, coup-proofing, leader survival, and regime transition.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Brauner

Abstract There is considerable evidence that authoritarian regimes have tended to spend more on the military than democracies. However, the direction of causality of this relationship has not been seriously investigated. The literature tends to assume that causality runs from regime type to military expenditure, but one might also expect military expenditure to influence regime type: history yields numerous examples of countries whose democratisation process was reversed by a powerful military unwilling to give up its privileged position in society. Successful democratisation, amongst other things, requires the reform of civil-military relations. In this paper, I build on the empirical literature on democratic transitions and examine whether lowering military expenditure in a democratising country increases the chances of successful democracy consolidation. I use a number of techniques, including two-way fixed effects model and a panel VAR to examine the linkages and pattern of Granger causality between measures of regime type, GDP and military expenditures.


Author(s):  
Marybeth P. Ulrich

American civil-military relations are rooted in constitutional foundations that distribute and check political power, such as civilian control over the military. Preserving American democracy requires adherence to these foundational democratic principles. This chapter argues that American policymakers, the military, and civilian society lack a shared understanding of the democratic norms that underpin US civil-military relations. Furthermore, poor understanding of democratic norms in general, and of civil-military relations norms in particular, puts American democracy at risk. Consequently, a review of the constitutional foundations of American civil-military relations and an assessment of the normative state of such relations is in order. This chapter defines civil-military relations; reviews the constitutional origins of American civil-military relations; presents the essential civil-military norms for democratic states; and highlights the responsibilities of political leaders, military actors, and civilian society to uphold them. Such a review contributes to improving the shared understanding of democratic civil-military relations norms that is essential to their preservation.


Author(s):  
Joel J. Sokolsky

Civil–military relations in Canada are “civil” not because Canadians are inherently “nice,” but because there is not much opportunity, incentive, or fodder for serious and intensive disagreement over defense policy between the military and the political leadership. This does not mean that disagreements do not arise or that the military has not chaffed from time to time under Canada’s relatively strict liberal-democratic traditions of civilian control over the military. Moreover, it is not the structure, traditions, and practices of government in Canada that best explain the relatively ordered nature of civil–military relations. Rather, one must look to the very nature of the Canadian defense and security situation. While Canada is also known for, and at times has vigorously promoted, its contributions to collective security through United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations, it has been its participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) that has determined almost all of defense policy and the posture and major weapons systems of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). This has had profound implications for civil–military relations in Canada and also accounts for the relatively “civil” tone, and the lack of tension and controversy, in those relations. This has meant that Canada’s political leaders and the senior leadership of the CAF have not had to engage in intensive “dialogue” on alternative conceptions of the international strategic environment and what a Canadian “grand strategy” should be in order to guide how the Canadian forces should be postured and equipped to meet security challenges. Canada does have a “grand strategy”; it is just not that grand. In the end, what tempers and smooths civil–military relations in Canada is that the CAF remains supportive of Canada’s not-so-grand grand strategy and accompanying expeditionary strategic culture, even if that culture is disciplined by a fiscal efficiency that sometimes seeks to extract as much international involvement out of as few military assets as possible. It is well understood on both sides of the civil–military divide that the CAF needs to maintain the confidence of political leaders to be effective in supporting the foreign policy objectives of the government through the applied or apprehended use of force when requested. In order to achieve this, the senior officer corps and the military apparatus must be cognizant of the breadth of nonmilitary factors that play into civil–military relations. Acknowledging that the scope of policy choices is inherently limited by international factors beyond Canada’s control, the importance of domestic priorities, and the access that Canadian politicians have to military expertise and assessments from other sources, the CAF has, for the most part, unobtrusively provided its political master with advice consistent with the realities facing Canadians at home and abroad. Even here, however, the Canadian military, perhaps more than most, understands the unequal character of its dialogue.


Author(s):  
Tughral Yamin

The importance of civil military relations assumes seminal importance in ensuring the success of all phases of a counter insurgency campaign. In the true tradition of the Clausewitzian dictum that war is the continuation of policy and vice versa; Pakistan Army has been employed as a matter of policy in counter insurgency operations in the erstwhile tribal areas. They have also been used in the stabilization operations to bring about normality in the insurgency ridden areas. In fact the employment of Pakistan Army in the stabilization process defies any previous example in any other country. In all phases of the conflict cycle, the military has worked hand in glove with its civilian counterparts. The civil-military coordination (CIMIC) in the insurgency ridden areas has taken place within the framework of the established ground rules of an organized counter insurgency campaign. It would not be unfair to say that the return to normality in the erstwhile FATA has only been possible because of a well-knit CIMIC architecture. This paper briefly explicates the salient points of the CIMIC aspect of the counter and post-insurgency part of the operations in the conflict zones and highlights the importance of this aspect of dealing with insurgencies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2199622
Author(s):  
Sergio Catignani ◽  
Nir Gazit ◽  
Eyal Ben-Ari

This Armed Forces & Society forum is dedicated to exploring recent trends in the characteristics of military reserves and of the changing character of reserve forces within the armed forces within the military, the civilian sphere, and in between them. To bring new and critical perspectives to the study of reserve forces and civil–military relations, this introduction and the five articles that follow draw on two organizing conceptual models: The first portrays reservists as transmigrants and focuses on the plural membership of reservists in the military and in civilian society and the “travel” between them. The second model focuses on the multiple formal and informal compacts (contracts, agreements, or pacts) between reservists and the military.


2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110014
Author(s):  
Holger Albrecht ◽  
Michael Bufano ◽  
Kevin Koehler

This article introduces a theory on military role expansion in emerging democracies and poses a broad question: who wants the military to adopt which role in society and politics? Drawing on an original, nationally representative survey conducted in Tunisia, the article explores people’s preferences for the military to remain a security provider or serve in government and contribute to policing protests. Findings reveal that public support for military role expansion is substantial and varies across political cleavages. We test hypotheses to account for cleavages driven by the country’s authoritarian past versus partisan divides during Tunisia’s transition to democracy. Findings indicate that popular support for military role expansion is driven by anti-system sentiments prevalent in contemporary Tunisian politics: while voters prefer the military as a role model for security provision, non-voters support its enhanced role in politics. These observations have ample implications for the research programs on civil–military relations and the dynamics of democratic consolidation. Tunisia’s experience warrants greater attention to anti-system attitudes caused by people’s disillusionment with democratic procedures. In turn, authoritarian legacies do not appear to play a prominent role during such challenging transitions toward democratic consolidation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402198975
Author(s):  
Polina Beliakova

Civilian control of the military is a fundamental attribute of democracy. While democracies are less coup-prone, studies treating civilian control as a dependent variable mostly focus on coups. In this paper, I argue that the factors predicting coups in autocracies, weaken civilian control of the military in democracies in different ways. To capture this difference, I advance a new comprehensive framework that includes the erosion of civilian control by competition, insubordination, and deference. I test the argument under conditions of an intrastate conflict—a conducive environment for the erosion of civilian control. A large-N analysis confirms that while intrastate conflict does not lead to coups in democracies, it increases the military’s involvement in government, pointing to alternative forms of erosion taking place. Further case study—Russia’s First Chechen War—demonstrates the causal logic behind the new framework, contributing to the nuanced comparative analysis of civil-military relations across regimes.


2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. Feaver

President George W. Bush's Iraq surge decision in late 2006 is an interesting case for civil-military relations theory, in particular, the debate between professional supremacists and civilian supremacists over how much to defer to the military on decisions during war. The professional supremacists argue that the primary problem for civil-military relations during war is ensuring the military an adequate voice and keeping civilians from micromanaging and mismanaging matters. Civilian supremacists, in contrast, argue that the primary problem is ensuring that well-informed civilian strategic guidance is authoritatively directing key decisions, even when the military disagrees with that direction. A close reading of the available evidence—both in published accounts and in new, not-for-attribution interviews with the key players—shows that the surge decision vindicates neither camp. If President Bush had followed the professional supremacists, there would have been no surge because his key military commanders were recommending against that option. If Bush had followed the civilian supremacists to the letter, however, there might have been a revolt of the generals, causing the domestic political props under the surge to collapse. Instead, Bush's hybrid approach worked better than either ideal type would have.


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