The military and national politics

2008 ◽  
pp. 57-74
Keyword(s):  
National Politics ◽  
The Military

The Military Post-Mugabe

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-188
Author(s):  
Godfrey Maringira
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Difference ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Military

This article argues that, through the coup, the military has become more visible in national politics in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe. The current situation under President Mnangagwa marks a qualitative difference with the military under Mugabe’s rule. Currently, in now being more prominent, the military is politics and is the determinant of any political transition that may be forthcoming in Zimbabwe. However, if it deems it necessary, the military accommodates civilian politicians into politics in order to ‘sanitize’ the political landscape in its own interests. Simultaneously, despite their involvement in the coup, ordinary soldiers feel increasingly marginalized under Mnangagwa’s government.

Fiji: The Militarization of Politics in a Small-Island Developing State

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vijay Naidu
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Military Force ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Island States ◽  
Military Commanders ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Military

The Republic of Fiji is a small archipelagic state of less than a million people in the southwest Pacific. It has a relatively minuscule military force in global terms but is the largest among the island states of Oceania. The size of the Republic (formerly “Royal”) Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) in the early 21st century is due to its role in peacekeeping for the United Nations. The Fijian military became entangled in Fiji politics having usurped political power on four separate occasions in the last 30 years, and it can be unequivocally said that there has been a militarization of politics. At first, the military’s involvement in national politics was on the behest of defeated politicians but, 30 years later, the military itself has become a major political player. This is most evident by the fact that former military commanders and coup. The military has becoming a powerful player in Fiji politics has occurred in haphazard but overwhelming ways. Fiji politics has an ever-present “elephant in the room” which is the RFMF.

Remedying the Legacy of State Collapse

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-70
Author(s):  
Lidwien Kapteijns
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Break Line ◽  
The State ◽  
Military Regime ◽  
National Politics ◽  
State Collapse ◽  
Major Break ◽  
The Military ◽  
Peace And Reconciliation ◽  
Cover Up

This chapter discusses why the campaign of clan cleansing of 1991–1992 was a key shift in the Somali civil war and remains the major break-line underlying Somali national politics today. It then lays out three principles that might help avoid simply redrawing the lines along which the civil war was fought, and concludes with recommendations for three tangible steps towards peace and reconciliation. At the heart of the mistrust and mutual rejection in Somalia today lie the actions of former leaders of the United Somali Congress and Somali National Movement, who resorted to clan-based killings and expulsions in order to cover up their past complicity with the military regime; spun false clan histories to rebrand themselves as heroic leaders of their clans; and then tried to establish authority over parts of the state and country in the name of clan.

Skirts Rolled Up

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-83
Author(s):  
Anne Eller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Working Women ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City ◽  
Political Scene

This essay considers the participation of Port-au-Prince women in municipal and national politics during the later decades of the nineteenth century. The growth of Port-au-Prince changed the dynamics of these contests, as newly arrived women joined expanding popular neighborhoods, and many assumed a central role in feeding the city. Women moved freely through the heart of the capital and the immediate countryside on personal, commercial, and sometimes directly political itineraries. While formally excluded from electoral politics, working women made their political desires well known, as they exerted an influence on the military movements that toppled the administration several times. These armed contests, as well as the stratification and militarization of the political scene during peacetime, provoked gendered violence. Simultaneously, working women confronted disdain from journalists who would discipline the women’s great influence. Nevertheless, these women commanded considerable respect in political contests that often seemed to have as their stakes the very independence of the nation itself.

Mauritania

2021 ◽  
pp. 108-126
Author(s):  
Boubacar N’Diaye
Keyword(s):  
Geographic Location ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Armed Violence ◽  
The Military

As a Sahelian state, Mauritania is inevitably affected by the insecurity stemming from its geopolitical environment. However, Mauritania’s comparatively less obvious vulnerabilities are to be found more in its own checkered recent history and the resulting fraught political, socioeconomic, and cultural dynamics than in its geographic location. The country’s complex social mosaic is marked by tensions between Moors and Negro-Mauritanians, as well as between beydane and haratine resulting from a legacy of Moorish slavery. Its fragile stability is built on an illusory efficacy against terrorism and a façade of unity among its officer corps, but may be unsustainable in the long run. The insecurities and vulnerabilities have the potential to lead to acute communitarian conflicts, even armed violence, if three persistent, interrelated challenges are not decisively addressed: deciding on the very identity of the country, an end to militarization by definitively extirpating the military from national politics, and genuinely reducing the threat of radicalization and terrorism by ending the related manipulation of Islam by its elites.

Liberalism and Democracy in Myanmar

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman David ◽  
Ian Holliday
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Critical Question ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Aung San Suu Kyi ◽  
The Military ◽  
Depth Interviews

Historic Myanmar elections in November 2015 paved the way for an NLD government led by Aung San Suu Kyi to take office in March 2016, and saw the country deepen its graduated transition away from authoritarian rule. Nevertheless, military forces that for decades had dominated national politics remain privileged in a constitutional framework designed to deliver discipline-flourishing democracy. In August 2017, the military intensified its campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim minority living mostly in Rakhine State, pushing the number of refugees seeking shelter in neighbouring Bangladesh to nearly one million. One critical question that now confronts the fifty million people of Myanmar, a major Southeast Asian nation, is whether the push for greater democracy is strong enough to prevail over the resistance of a powerful military machine and swelling undercurrents of intolerance. What are the prospects for liberal democracy in Myanmar? This book addresses this question by examining historical conditions, constitutionalism, popular support for democracy, major political actors, group relations and tolerance, and transitional justice. To probe the meaning of key concepts it presents a rich array of evidence, including eighty-eight in-depth interviews and three waves of surveys and survey experiments undertaken between 2014 and 2018, all of which are triangulated with constitutional and legal texts and reports issued locally and globally. The analysis culminates in the concept of limited liberalism, which reflects an at times puzzling blend of liberal and illiberal attitudes. The book concludes that a weakening of liberal commitments among politicians and citizens alike, allied with spreading limited liberal attitudes, casts doubt on the prospects for liberal democracy in Myanmar for the foreseeable future.

The University Student Tradition in Brazil

1970 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert O. Myhr
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
University Students ◽  
Student Activism ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Current Student ◽  
The University ◽  
The Military

Almost every day our newspapers feature accounts of student ferment on one or another of the university campuses in both the “developed” and “developing” nations around the globe. University students appear to have become extremely active in recent years in attempting to influence policy decisions taken by both administrators of higher education and government officials. In Brazil, however, such student political activism is clearly not just a recent phenomenon. While Brazilian university students have played an increasingly important role in national politics since World War II, most recently in their outspoken opposition to the military-dominated governments of the late Castello Branco and that of President Artur Costa e Silva, they enjoy an important tradition of student political activism that cannot be overlooked. In fact, accepting the suggestions made with real insight by E. Wight Bakke regarding the causes of student activism, we find that an examination of the student tradition in Brazil helps to explain current student agitation.

scholarly journals Reimagining the Populism and Leadership of Miss Fatima Jinnah

2019 ◽  
Vol IV (IV) ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
Sana Zaheer ◽  
Muhammad Iqbal Chawla
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Active Part ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Leadership Qualities ◽  
Politics Of Resistance ◽  
The Military

This article explores dynamics of Miss Fatima Jinnah’s leadership qualities by applying the Ideational approach. The article aims to re-think the scenario of Pakistan at the eve of presidential elections 1965 with regarding populism. It underscores causes, events and consequences of the 1965’s Elections by re-contextualizing the views and actions of Miss Jinnah. She won the elections, but a large-scale rigging deprived her of becoming the first lady President of Pakistan and in Islamic World. She did not play an active part in the political arena until the Presidential elections challenging the military dictator. This study attempts to answer why the Mother of the land opted for the politics of resistance; how she took an active part in the election campaign, and what were the implications of her participation in the elections by situating her role in national politics through the theoretical lens of populism.

Governing the City-State: Notes on the Politics of the Small Latin American Countries

1972 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-346
Author(s):  
Roland H. Ebel
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Geographically Dispersed ◽  
The Developed Countries ◽  
City State ◽  
The Military

One of the fundamental difficulties in the study of Latin American politics by North American scholars has been the attempt to apply the political experience of the United States (and, to a lesser extent, that of the developed countries of Europe and Asia) to that region. In attempting to interpret Latin America’s political patterns and understand her political difficulties, emphasis has been placed historically on such visible features as the instability of national governments, the lack of adequate party systems, the dysfunctional role of the military, inadequate constitutions, hierarchic social structures and a variety of deficiencies in the region’s political culture. In proceeding along these lines, analysts have been working from the implicit, although I believe unconscious, assumption that the Latin American nation-state constitutes a large, geographically dispersed polity. Until recently there has been very little effort to even study the political processes of the Latin American city, much less attempt to understand national politics in light of the region’s peculiar urban culture.

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