Military Intervention In Politics Research Articles

Does Democratization Reduce the Risk of Military Interventions in Politics in Africa?

This article investigates whether there is an association between a trajectory of political liberalization, democratization, and military interventions. In what is arguably the ‘least likely case’ region in the world, this study analyzes the experience of 55 regimes in Africa between 1990 and 2004 and finds a striking regularity. Liberalizing, and in particular democratic, regimes have a significantly different track record of being subjected either to successful or failed military interventions. The analysis suggests that democratic regimes are about 7.5 times less likely to be subjected to attempted military interventions than electoral authoritarian regimes and almost 18 times less likely to be victims of actual regime breakdown as a result. Through an additional case study analysis of the ‘anomalous’ cases of interventions in democratic polities, the results are largely strengthened as most of the stories behind the numbers suggests that it is only when democratic regimes perform dismally and/or do not pay soldiers their salaries that they are at great risk of being overthrown. Legitimacy accrued by political liberalization seems to ‘inoculate’ states against military intervention in the political realm.

Building “National” Armies—Building Nations?

This article surveys recent cases of internationalized statebuilding in postintervention, post—(ethnic) conflict societies in the light of an academic tradition that has seen military forces as a particularly effective vehicle for integrating a country's diverse population. It is argued that armed forces that are ethnically representative in their ranks and leadership can encourage a sense of commonality across ethnic boundaries, which can help secure a fragile peace. However, the connection between representativeness and integration is intricate; and whereas outside powers may enable otherwise unlikely outcomes, their leverage is circumscribed by a number of factors. The article also suggests that an ethnically representative army may “tie up” capabilities in ways that reduce the likelihood of military intervention in politics or (ethnic) violence perpetrated by military personnel.

Civilian supremacy in democracies with ‘fault lines’: The role of the parliamentary standing committee on defence in Bangladesh

This article sets out to identify the conditions that promote civilian supremacy over the military in the post-military democracies. The article addresses the case of Bangladesh, where a decade-old post-military democratic political process is riddled with problems, such as the absence of opposition parties in the parliament, chronic political instability and violence and inefficient governance. However, the powerful military has not yet shown any inclination towards intervention in domestic politics. Rather, various civilian institutions, such as the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (PSCD), have been successful in raising the level of the military's accountability to the civilian government and society. The article seeks to explain the role of PSCD during 1998–2001 in promoting civilian supremacy in Bangladesh. It argues that three sets of factors can explain the PSCD's role. First, there is intense competition for political power between the two major parties, which resists the military's involvement in politics in favour of any one political party. Second, there is the important role of civil society in favour of civilian supremacy. Third, there are external factors such as the donor countries' and international agencies' stance in favour of democracy and the Bangladesh military's participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions, which are discouraging military intervention in politics at home.

The Shadow of the Gwangju Uprising in the Democratization of Korean Politics

The political legacies the Gwangju Uprising produced played a pivotal role in checking military intervention in politics during the democratic transition as well as in establishing the principle of civilian supremacy during the democratic transition period. By fostering a counter-ideology against the military regime, by expanding democratic forces, and by creating a new political structure that limited the choice of the authoritarian elites and the United States, the Gwangju Uprising had a decisive influence on democratic transition and consolidation in South Korea.

Arms Transfers and Coups d'État: A Study on Sub-Saharan Africa

Early studies of African coups have largely focused on domestic determinants such as social mobilization, economic conditions, and the characteristics of the military itself. Scant attention has been paid to the political effects of arms transfers on military intervention in Africa. Considering that defense spending may meet the demands of the armed forces, absorb vital social and economic resources needed for development, retard the growth of the civilian domestic product, or strengthen the political position of the military, it is likely that expenditures on arms imports may directly or indirectly affect the likelihood of coups in sub-Saharan African countries. Utilizing theories of arms transfers and coups d'état, a causal model was constructed and data were collected for 35 African nations. An event-count analysis in conjunction with conventional regression techniques was employed for statistical estimation. The findings suggest that arms transfers serve to meet the military's corporate interests and have a long-term direct effect on reducing the likelihood of coups in Africa. However, arms transfers contribute to African regime instability indirectly by enhancing the military's position vis-a-vis civilian institutions in society. Former French colonies have experienced significantly fewer coups than the rest of Africa, but throughout sub-Saharan Africa, countries that experienced an economic downturn or a coup are more likely to have military intervention in politics.

José Nun's "Middle-Class Military Coup" in Contemporary Perspective

Military dictators in Latin America have long been likened to men on horseback. S. E. Finer (1962), Edwin Lieuwen (1965), and others addressed this culturally specific image in their works, and Samuel P. Huntington (1957) suggested that professionalization of the military would ultimately discourage such military intervention in politics. It was not until such diverse observers as Morris Janowitz (1964), Juan Linz (1970), Alfred Stepan (1971), and Guillermo O'Donnell (1973) began to examine the role of military establishments (qua institutions) in political processes in the Third World, however, that a more thorough sociological understanding of the antidemocratic dynamic of Latin American state politics became possible. Jose Nun's 1967 article Middle-Class Military Coup offered a path-breaking understanding of a wave of interventions in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. Its approach was frankly sociological and Marxian. It argued that an embattled middle class, unaware of its own class status per se and constantly aspiring to the values of the economic elite, nevertheless abandoned the democratization of its countries because of perceived threats to its well-being. It came to be represented, according to Nun, by the military officer corps, acting both as a fiduciary of the middle class and as one of its constituents. The greatest threats to these industrializing, urbanizing, and capitalist systems, as Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto correctly if somewhat ironically noted, was the growing democratization of the poorest

Russian military intervention in politics 1991–96

Russian military intervention in politics 1991–96

Military Rebellion in Argentina: Between Coups and Consolidation.

Argentina's recently established democracy endured the trauma of four major military uprisings between 1987 and 1990, continuing even after the rebels' original motivations faded. Exploring the causes of the rebellions and the rebel movement's development, Deborah L. Norden's Military Rebellion in Argentina underlines the inherently undefined nature of new democracies and reveals important dimensions of how coalitions are formed within the armed forces. By focusing on a military movement rather than merely separate incidents of insurrection, this study reveals central motivations that could be otherwise overlooked. Norden begins with an analysis of the relation between democracy and military insurrection in previous postauthoritarian civilian periods, then turns to Argentina's long battle against military intervention in politics. The study focuses on the internally divisive effects of the 1976-1983 military regime, which generated the intra-army cleavages that emerged during the subsequent period of civilian rule, and the civilian policies that prompted the rebels to action. At the heart of the study is an examination of the evolution of military rebellion, looking at the shift from policy-provoked reaction to more independent, politically motivated organization. Norden also explores general themes such as intransigent interventionism and the effects of different military regimes in South America on the likelihood of democratic consolidation. Deborah L. Norden is an assistant professor of government at Colby College. Her articles on Latin America have appeared in numerous journals.

Thailand: Toward Democratic Stability

Thailand: Toward Democratic Stability Daniel King (bio) and Jim LoGerfo (bio) In July 1995, Thailand held its second set of parliamentary elections since the country’s most recent transition to democracy in May 1992, when massive protests forced the military-backed government of General Suchinda Kraprayoon out of power and pushed parliament to democratize the constitution. In the July 1995 elections, a new coalition led by the Chart Thai (Thai Nation) party ousted the government headed by the Democrat Party of then-Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, and Chart Thai leader Banhan Silpa-archa became Thailand’s twenty-first prime minister. Was this peaceful transfer of power a sign that, in the three years since the political transition, democracy has been consolidated in Thailand? According to the editors of one comparative study of democratization, a democratic regime is consolidated “when all politically significant groups regard its key political institutions as the only legitimate framework for political contestation, and adhere to democratic rules of the game.” 1 In Thailand, the process of democratic consolidation seems well under way. Between May 1992 and July 1995, no important antisystem political parties or social movements emerged, and there were no calls from the armed forces, the capitalist class, the mass media, the universities, labor, or other social groups for the imposition of authoritarian rule. During the September 1992 and July 1995 parliamentary elections, as during the period between them, the military remained largely on the political sidelines, politicians mostly respected democratic procedures, and social groups pressed their demands and processed their conflicts in accord with the constitution and without “knocking on the barracks door.” On the level of institutions, however, the weakness of [End Page 102] parliament and of the party system continues to restrict political accountability and representativeness. Stable, consolidated democracy has long eluded Thailand. When a group of junior army and navy officers and civil servants overthrew the absolute monarchy in June 1932, they proclaimed the establishment of the first democratic regime in Thai political history. The system they created, however, was democratic more in form than in content, and it soon gave way to military-based rule. Such would be the fate of many subsequent democratic regimes. Since 1932 there have been nine successful coups and seven failed attempts. The frequent transitions to and from authoritarian rule typically involved the promulgation of a new constitution; the present charter is Thailand’s fifteenth. Not surprisingly, this lack of political continuity has hindered the institutionalization of the party system. The typical Thai political party lacks a mass base, a well-articulated organization, and, indeed, any identifiable ideology. 2 Instead, parties form around personal ties and the dispensation of machine-style patronage, in keeping with a social structure based largely on patron-client networks. Thus the primary features of the Thai political system have been military intervention in politics, the struggle between military officers and civilian politicians over the division of power and spoils, and the weakness of political institutions. Thai political history since the fall of the absolute monarchy in 1932 can be divided into five periods: 1932–73, 1973–76, 1976–91, 1991–92, and 1992 to the present. Although the process of change has been uneven and discontinuous, the overall trends have been toward a declining political role for the military, a correspondingly more important place for parliament in the political process, growing identification of political parties with particular regions and constituencies along with continued party-system fragmentation and a lack of differentiation among party platforms, and an increasingly well developed and assertive civil society. Between 1932 and 1973, Thailand’s political system was at best semidemocratic. The breakthrough to mass political participation occurred in October 1973, when student-led demonstrations for a permanent constitution brought down a corrupt and unpopular military dictatorship. Yet the proliferation of parties after 1973 made parliamentary governance highly precarious, and the turmoil that accompanied democratic rule led many Thais to welcome the “restoration of order” promised by the military coup staged on 6 October 1976. The coup reestablished the preeminence of the armed forces over parliament, the party system, and civil society. But the government installed in its aftermath proved too reactionary even for the armed...

From Counterrevolutionary Warfare To Political Awakening: The Uruguayan and Argentine Armed Forces in the 1970s

This article presents an alternative way of considering the role of military ideology in Uruguay and Argentina in the 1970's. Although it refers to two case studies in the Southern Cone, some of the conclusions emerging from an analysis of the effect of military intervention in politics upon the military itself have a general and universal character and could be extrapolated to and tested in other contexts.

Emerging Patterns of Political Leadership in Thailand

Political stability in Thailand is inextricably linked to the issue of political legitimacy. The recent political upheavals, specifically the brutal repression of pro-democracy protestors, were the con sequence of a desperate attempt by the military to use force to maintain its legitimacy not only to govern the country but also to intervene in the country's political system. During the Cold War era, the military justified its intervention by invoking the spectre of the communist threat to Thai national security. With the end of the Cold War, such a justification is no longer credible. This has allowed civilian politicians, particularly those favouring Western-style liberal democracy, to regain their power and in fluence. However, it is by no means certain that the era of military intervention in politics is over. The military, with the support of some civilian politicians, is trying to regain its hegemonic position but this is being resisted by pro-democracy forces. What seems certain is that in the coming years the contention between liberal and conservative forces will be very intense and this could well affect Thailand's national security.

Veena Kukreja. Civil-Military Relations in South Asia: Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. 1991. 257 pp. Bibliography + Index. Price: Rs 260 (Hardbound).

A quite large number of developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which are today characterised by chronic underdevelopment, general social retardation, slow social mobility, and political instability became highly prone to military interventions in politics in their initial phases of decolonization soon after World War II. These military interventions in the fragile civil polities and stagnant economies, termed by some scholars as the coup zone, are justified and legitimised on various pretexts of modernisation, democratisation, and reform; which means that the military seeks to fill the institutional vacuum when the overall civil administration of the country breaks down as a consequence of the rivalry for pelf and power between various ruling classes. Thus, the military has emerged as the most powerful institution in these countries. Some social revolutions of modern times, in China in 1949, for example, and in Cuba in 1959, were caused by endemic military interventions in the civil society.

Civil-Military Relations in Developing Countries

Students of civil-military relations, particularly those in the developing countries, admit having to work on myopic assumptions, meagre data, sloppy conceptualization and inelegant explanations. The relative newness of this area of studies could be one reason for this. The study of civil-military relations in the narrow sense referring mainly to military coups and interventions, has attained importance after World War II. But the study of civil-military relations in the broader perspective of multiplicity of relationships between military men, institutions and interests, on the one hand, and diverse and often conflicting non-military organizations and political personages and interests on the other, has begun to draw academic interest only in the last two decades or so. In the twentieth century, the armed forces, being an universal and integral part of a nation's political system, no longer remain completely aloof from politics in any nation. If politics is concerned, in David Easton's celebrated words, with the authoritative allocation of values and power within a society, the military as a vital institution in the polity can hardly be wished out of participatory bounds, at least for legitimate influence as an institutional interest group with a stake in the political decision-making. The varying roles the military may play in politics range from minimal legitimate influence by means of recognized channels inherent in their position and responsibilities within the political system to the other extreme of total displacement of the civilian government in the forms of illegitimate overt military intervention in politics. This paper seeks to attempt an overview of the existing scholarship on civil-military relations; second, it examines civil-military relations in the world with special reference to major political systems of the world; third, it surveys the literature on civil-military relations in general, and finally, it attempts to develop a general, complex, and hopefully fruitful causal model for analyzing the dynamics of civil-military relations; exploring implications for future research on civil-military relations.

Book Review: Military Intervention in Politics

Book Review: Military Intervention in Politics

Toward an Alternative Theoretical Framework for Analyzing Military Intervention in Politics in Third World Countries

Toward an Alternative Theoretical Framework for Analyzing Military Intervention in Politics in Third World Countries

The Military Threat To Spanish Democracy: A Historical Perspective

Military intervention in politics has been a constant factor in Spanish history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The nature of intervention has varied and it can be divided into three distinct periods: 1814 to 1875; 1923 to 1939; and 1976 to the present. The armed forces which emerged from the Franco regime were dominated by an antidemocratic ideology, born of civil war and preserved through the military's isolation from society at large. They have neither fully supported nor wholly rejected the democratic system created by the transition which followed the death of Francisco Franco (in November 1975); they have been a source of perpetual concern. The first governments of the democracy did not take measures to resolve this situation. The socialist government elected in October 1982 has inherited the problem and is aware of the types of major changes needed to solve it.

The Stability Quotient of Greece's Post-1974 Democratic Institutions

The Stability Quotient of Greece's Post-1974 Democratic Institutions* Theodore A. Couloumbis and Pródromos M. Yannis As we are drawing close to ten years of uninterrupted democratic rule, it is timely and appropriate to assess the stability quotient1 of Greece's post-1974 democratic institutions. It is our view that Greece can no longer be classified as a praetorian state,2 as, it could be argued, was the case in the pre-1967 years of political troubles which led to *Paper presented at the International Studies Association Conference, Mexico City, Mexico, (April 5-9, 1983.) 'Stability here is defined in terms of continuity of constitutional arrangements, permitting national elections at regular intervals among two or more political parties, and involving no direct military intervention in politics. 2Elsewhere we have described praetorianism in Greece as a condition where ". . . political elites [were described] as conflictful, conspiratorial, corrupt, and levantine; the Greek citizens' 'national character' ... as deeply family-centered but without civil consciousness; the . . . political parties ... as personalistic, clientelistic, non-principled, centrifugal, disorganized, short-lived, and numerous; the system of education ... as stiff, archaic, and formalistic; the middle classes as opportunistic and vacillating between authoritarian and democratic patterns of governance; the press as yellow and inflammatory ; the church as ritualistic and socially indifferent." Theodore A. Couloumbis, John A. Petropulos, and Harry J. Psomiades, Foreign Interference in Greek Politics (New York, 1976) p. 143. The literature on military intervention in politics is quite diverse. It ranges from "clinical" studies into the causes of military intervention, such as Samuel P. Huntington's Political Ordei- in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968) and Morris Janowitz's Military Institutions and Coercion in the Developing Nations (Chicago, 1977) to studies viewing the military as an engine of development and modernization in Third World states such as John J. Johnson, ed., The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton, 1962) to studies viewing the military as a conservative and even retrogressive agent in the process of political and economic development such as Eric Nordlinger's Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Government (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977). For a thoughtful and relatively comprehensive review of the literature dealing with the role of the armed forces in societies see, Gwyn Harries-Jenkins and Charles C. Moskos, Jr., "Trend Report: Armed Forces and Society," Current Sociology, 29 (Winter 1981), 1-75. 359 360 Theodore A. Couloumbis and Pródromos M. Yannis the military coup of April 21, 19673 and to the establishment of dictatorial rule from 1967 to 1974. The thesis of this paper is that in the nine-year period (1974— 1983) since the collapse of the dictatorship,4 the democratic structures that have been erected in Greece have taken root and are passing major tests of efficiency and legitimacy.5 To examine the above proposition , we will proceed with an assessment of stability /instability indicators that have been operative since 1974 in an attempt to identify those factors which have contributed to stability and those that have worked in the opposite direction. The post-1974 dramatic departure from previous patterns has been the product of good leadership, structural changes in the Greek society (its political culture and its economic system), and regional reformulations, especially in the troubled post-1974 Greek-Turkish relationship. The smooth transition in 1974—75 from dictatorship to legitimate (not just self-proclaimed) democracy is probably a textbook case. The formula which was used by Constantine Karamanlis, the architect of this transition, could be summarized as follows: "Remove elements of destabilization from past political structures without creating new and 3A sample of the literature on the period of the Greek military junta includes the following works: Keith R. Legg, Politics in Modern Greece (Stanford, CA, 1969); Richard Clogg and George Yannopoulos, eds., Greece Under Military Rule (New York, 1972); Stephen G. Xydis, "Coups and Countercoups in Greece, 1967—1973," Political Science Quarterly, 89 (Fall 1974); Theodore A. Couloumbis, "The Greek Junta Phenomenon," Polity, 6 (Spring 1974), 345-374; and Laurence Stern, The Wrong Horse: The Politics of Intervention and the Failure of American Diplomacy (New York, 1977). following the assumption of power by a government of National Unity headed by Constantine Karamanlis (July 23...

The Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes

5Y rEARS of scholarly concern with the conditions of democracy have been followed rather belatedly by recent attention on the part of students of comparative politics to the clearly related, though hardly identical, question of the breakdown of democratic regimes. Similarly, most students of military governments, and of authoritarian regimes generally, have been far more interested in the reasons for military intervention in politics than in the causes or process of the demise of authoritarianism. Only lately has this begun to change. In recent years, for example, there have been a spate of scholarly analyses of Latin America's latest version of authoritarianism, the bureaucratic-authoritarian (B-A) regime.2 In the earlier writings concerning such regimes it was often at least implicitly treated as the new paradigm of Latin America's political future, following upon those earlier, failed paradigms of democracy and socialist revolution. That is, B-A regimes were presumed to be both the wave of the future and a semi-permanent condition, related as they were to Latin America's situation of international dependency and the supposed end of the import-substitution phase of economic development. More recent scholarship, however, has begun to question or qualify some of those formulations and to address such questions as the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of such regimes, as well as the causes and conditions of their possible demise.3 Nonetheless, there still has been remarkably little comparative attention paid to how and why authoritarian governments break down4 (apart, that is, from studies of certain particular cases). Can some general patterns be dis-

Military Intervention in Politics: Contrasting Cases of Pakistan and India

It is interesting to note that, although the Pakistani and Indian political systems share many common features relating to history, military organization and an overall areal culture, the two systems have displayed contrasting patterns of civil-military relations. The armies of both the countries inherited the British Indian military traditions of non-involvement in politics, but in Pakistan the Army eroded this tradition by intervening decisively and frequently whereas in India, the principle of civilian supremacy remains intact. Their post-independence development, composition, and relationship with the civilian authority has been markedly different. This had a direct bearing upon the divergent roles of the armies of the two countries. Given the variety of hypotheses that have been suggested as explanations for the contrasting behaviour of the two successor armies of British India, this article would examine several variables and relationships in comparative perspective under two sets of theoretical explanatory variables that are too often kept separate. These are: 1 the internal features of the military establishment1 and 2 the external or environmental variables.2

Pay, Promotion, and Other Self-Interests of Military Intervention in Politics

Pay, Promotion, and Other Self-Interests of Military Intervention in Politics