Institutional Arsenals for Democracy? The Postcoup Effects of Conscript Militaries

2019 ◽  
pp. 0095327X1987198
Author(s):  
Joseph Paul Vasquez ◽  
Jonathan Powell
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Aid Conditionality ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Societal Interest ◽  
Cross National

Recent years have seen increased study of military coups. While this generally emphasizes coups as a dependent variable, there is a growing debate as to how coups influence a country’s long-term political trajectory. This literature includes a handful of studies that claim coups against authoritarian regimes can act for the public good and provide a boost to the state’s democratization prospects. Causal mechanisms have included factors such as aid conditionality, economic interdependence, and foreign pressure more generally. We argue that this growing body of work can benefit from increased attention given to those who carry out coups: the armed forces. Specifically, we argue that coups reflecting a larger societal interest, be it the removal of a dictator or the desire for democracy after a dictator’s ouster, are more likely undertaken by conscript armies. A cross-national exploration of over 170 coups suggests that conscript militaries are in fact significantly more likely to oversee democratic transitions following military coups. Beyond contributing to a broader literature on civil–military relations, the article points to important policy implications for developing nations.

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.

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.

Backdoor peacekeeping

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 508-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Lundgren
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Panel Regression ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Military Relations

I advance and test a theoretical argument of how participation in UN peacekeeping affects the likelihood of coup attempts in troop-contributing countries (TCCs). The argument highlights the interplay between the economic incentives of militaries in poor TCCs and the UN’s preference for contributors with stable civil–military relations. Fearing the loss of UN reimbursement funds, militaries for which such funds are important will avoid visible acts of military insubordination, such as coup attempts, that would place their future participation in UN peacekeeping at risk. I test this proposition against time-series cross-sectional data on 157 countries in the 1991–2013 period using panel regression and matching. The data show that countries where the armed forces are more dependent on peacekeeping revenues experience fewer coup attempts than comparable peers, even when taking coup-proofing measures and other alternative explanations into account. I also find that the coup-restraining effect is only observed in periods where member states contribute enough troops to award the UN a real choice over alternative contributors. The study introduces a novel theoretic logic, presents empirical results at odds with the existing literature, and suggests important policy implications with regard to UN vetting and standards for troop-contributing countries.

Eroding Military Influence in Brazil: Politicians Against Soldiers By Wendy Hunter. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. 243p. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-243
Author(s):  
Craig Arceneaux
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Military Relations

Writing at a time when the literature on transitions to democracy was fixated on the mode of transition, and when concepts such as authoritarian legacy, authoritarian enclave, or the shadow of the past dominated, Wendy Hunter's 1997 book, Eroding Military Influence in Brazil, went against the grain. In a direct attack on institutionalist approaches that emphasized the resiliency of military prerogatives in transitions from military regimes, Hunter argues that democracy itself would, over time, reduce the influence exerted by the armed forces. A solid theoretical orientation, rich casework, and insightful commentary on the dynamics behind the creation of civilian control all mark the book as a noteworthy contribution to the literature on democratic transitions, civil–military relations, and Latin American politics.

Civil‐Military Relations in Contemporary Argentina

1984 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Little
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Medium Term ◽  
General Staff ◽  
Dirty War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Staff Relations

THE ISSUE OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS PRESENTS THE new Argentine government with several problems. One is the structuring of government, that is general staff relations. Moreover the new authorities must take a position in the short to medium term over the question of responsibility for the ‘dirty war’, the plundering of the public purse by the officer corps between 1976 and 1982 and the defeat in the war with Britain. And in the longer term they must confront the wider issue of how to both ‘civilianize’ the armed forces and ‘demilitarize’ civil society.

scholarly journals Introduction to the Armed Forces & Society Forum on Military Reserves in the “New Wars”

2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2199622
Author(s):  
Sergio Catignani ◽  
Nir Gazit ◽  
Eyal Ben-Ari
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Models ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
New Wars ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military ◽  
Critical Perspectives

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.

Civil–Military Relations and Russia’s Post-Soviet Military Culture: A Belief System Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2110629
Author(s):  
Kirill Shamiev
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Military Culture ◽  
Institutional Autonomy ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
The Government ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

This article studies the role of military culture in defense policymaking. It focuses on Russia’s post-Soviet civil–military relations and military reform attempts. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s armed forces were in a state of despair. Despite having relative institutional autonomy, the military neither made itself more effective before minister Serdyukov nor tried to overthrow the government. The paper uses the advocacy coalition framework’s belief system approach to analyze data from military memoirs, parliamentary speeches, and 15 interviews. The research shows that the military’s support for institutional autonomy, combined with its elites’ self-serving bias, critically contributed to what I term an “imperfect equilibrium” in Russian civil–military relations: the military could not reform itself and fought back against radical, though necessary, changes imposed by civilian leadership.

Rwanda: Civil–Military Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Jowell
Keyword(s):  
Central Africa ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Practical Experiences ◽  
The One ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

The army has been a central part of Rwanda’s political system from the precolonial period until the early 21st century and is intrinsically part of the construction and politics of the state. Civil–military relations in Rwanda demonstrate not only the central features of transitioning a rebel group to a national defense sector but also how some states construct their armed forces after a period of mass violence. Since the civil war and genocide in the early 1990s, the Rwandan military has been the primary actor in politics, the economy, and state building as well as in regional wars in central Africa and the Great Lakes region. Practical experiences of guerrilla insurgency and conflict in Uganda and Rwanda, postconflict military integration, and the intertwining of political and economic agendas with the ruling party have shaped civil–military relations in Rwanda and have been central to how the Rwandan defense sector functions. Contemporary Rwandan civil–military relations center around the two elements of service delivery and control, which has resulted in the development of an effective and technocratic military in terms of remit and responsibilities on the one hand, and the creation of a politicized force of coercion on the other hand. The military in Rwanda therefore reflects the pressures and dynamics of the wider state and cannot be separated from it. The Rwandan army is thus a “political army” and is part and parcel of the political structures that oversee and govern the Rwandan state.

scholarly journals The Degree of Military Political Autonomy during the Spanish, Argentine and Brazilian Transitions

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Zaverucha
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Military ◽  
Democratic Country

The state of civil–military relations in the world, especially in the Third World, is very well summed up by Mosca's statement that civilian control over the military ‘is a most fortunate exception in human history’.All over the globe, the armed forces have frequently preserved their autonomous power vis-à-vis civilians. They have also succeeded in maintaining their tutelage over some of the political regimes that have arisen from the process of transition from military to democratic governments, as in Argentina and Brazil. Spain is a remarkable exception. Today, Spain, despite its authoritarian legacy, is a democratic country. The constituted civil hierarchy has been institutionalised, military áutonomy weakened, and civilian control over the military has emerged. Spain's newly founded democracy now appears quite similar to the older European democracies.

Myanmar: Civil–Military Relations in a Tutelary Regime

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Bünte
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Veto Power ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
The Government ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Myanmar has had one of the longest ruling military regimes in the world. Ruling directly or indirectly for more than five decades, Myanmar’s armed forces have been able to permeate the country’s main political institutions, its economy, and its society. Myanmar is a highly revealing case study for examining the trajectory of civil–military relations over the past seven decades. Myanmar ended direct military rule only in 2011 after the military had become the most powerful institution in society, weakened the political party opposition severely, coopted several ethnic armed groups, and built up a business empire that allowed it to remain financially independent. The new tutelary regime—established in 2011 after proclaiming a roadmap to “discipline flourishing democracy” in 2003, promulgating a new constitution in 2008, and holding (heavily scripted) elections in 2010—allowed a degree of power-sharing between elected civilian politicians and the military for a decade. Although policymaking in economic, financial, and social arenas was transferred to the elected government, the military remained in firm control of external and internal security and continued to be completely autonomous in the management of its own affairs. As a veto power, the military was also able to protect its prerogatives from a position of strength. Despite this dominant position in the government, civil–military relations were hostile and led to a coup in February 2021. The military felt increasingly threatened and humiliated as civilians destroyed the guardrails it had put in place to protect its core interests within the tutelary regime. The military also felt increasingly alienated as the party the military had established repeatedly failed to perform in the elections.

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