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A Comparative Typology of Civil-Military Relations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Extract

WHEN ONE COMES TO LOOK AT THE LITERATURE ON CIVIL-MILITARY relations one is struck by the enormous proliferation of ad hoc generalizations on the subject, particularly where the military in new nations is concerned. Many of these contradict each other. Often the theories are not adequate to the facts. And frequently they depend on so many other things being equal that by the time one has made all the necessary qualifications there is not much explanatory force left in the original hypothesis.

The colonial legacy has on the one hand been said to create political armies in the image of those of the colonial power, which are less likely to interfere in politics.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1971

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References

1 Gutteridge, W., Military Institutions and Power in the New States, London, 1964, pp. 23 Google Scholar, seems to endorse this point. See also Coleman, J. S. and Bryce, Jr: ‘The Role of the Military in Sub-Saharan Africa’ in Johnson, J. J. (ed.), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, Princeton, N.J., pp. 398–9Google Scholar.

2 Janowitz, M., The Military in the Political Development of the New Nations, Chicago, 1964, pp. 63–4Google Scholar; Pye, L. W.Armies in the Process of Political Modernisation’ in Johnson, J. J. (ed.), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, Princeton, N.J., 1962, especially pp. 82–7Google Scholar.

3 Mazrui, A. A. and Rothchild, D., ‘The Soldier and the State in East Africa: Some Theoretical Conclusions on the Army Mutinies of 1964’, Chapter I of Mazrui, A. A., Violence and Thought, London, 1969, especially pp. 48 Google Scholar.

4 Huntington, S. P., The Soldier and the State, Cambridge, Mass., 1957, Part IGoogle Scholar.

5 A. A. Mazrui, ‘Anti-Militarism and Political Militancy in Tanzania’ in Mazrui Violence and Thought, Chapter II; and of course the entire literature on civil-military relations in Communist countries.

6 M. Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations, pp. 65–6.

7 Ibid., pp. 40–9.

8 Janowitz, M., The Professional Soldier, New York, Free Press, 1960, Chapter 8Google Scholar.

9 Pye, ‘Armies in the Process of Political Modernisation’ and M. Halpern, ‘Middle Eastern Armies and the New Middle Class’ in Johnson (ed.), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries; Gutteridge, Military Intervention and Power in the United States, Chapter V; Johnson, J. J., The Military and Society in Latin America, Stanford, California, 1964 Google Scholar; Lerner, D. and Robinson, R. D., ‘Swords into Ploughshares: The Turkish Army as a Modernising Force’, World Politics, XIII, 10, 1960 Google Scholar.

10 As Horowitz, I. L., ‘The Military Elites’ in Lipset, S. M. and Solari, A. (eds.), Elites in Latin America, London, 1967 Google Scholar, suggests, the question of whether the military in a conservative or radical/modernizing force depends on the peculiar circumstances of individual countries. The composition of the military elite has in most Latin American countries been increasingly ‘urbanized’ though in this respect it has followed rather than preceded other elites. Soldiers have espoused radical reforms - but often to the extent only that these were necessary for the development of a laissez-faire economy. On balance, Horowitz suggests, without the military ‘nearly every Latin American Republic would stand politically to the left of where it now is’: Ibid., p. 147.

11 Viz. Zolberg, A. R., ‘Military Intervention in the New States of Tropical Africa’ in Bienan, H. (ed.), The Military Intervenes, New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1968 Google Scholar, who implies that it is meaningless to talk of the army as being more committed to modernity or to organizational values than any other group in African societies. See also the data on the skill structure of the Nigerian army presented in the writer’s own book: Luckham, A. R., The Nigerian Military: A Sociological Analysis of Authority and Revolt, 1660–1967, Cambridge Google Scholar, forthcoming.

12 The quotation is from Hopkins, ‘Civil Military Relations in Developing Countries’, British Journal of Sociology, XVII, No. 2, June, 1966, p. 171. The most exhaustive discussion of the relation between format, firepower, cohesion and military intervention is in Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations, pp. 1–2, 31–40 and 67–74.

13 See the analysis of praetorianism in Rapoport, D., ‘A Comparative Theory of Military and Political Types’, in Huntington, S. P. (ed.), Changing Patterns of Military Politics, New York, 1963 Google Scholar; and the analysis of the ethnic matrix in military coups in Luttwak, E. N., Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook, London, 1968, p. 54 and p. 72Google Scholar. Viz. also my own analysis of the January 1966 coup in Nigeria, Luckham, The Nigerian Military, Chapter I.

14 Mazrui, ‘Anti-Militarism and Political Militancy in Tanzania’; Gutteridge, Military Institutions and Power in the New States, p. 105.

15 Finer, S. E., Man on Horseback, London, 1962 Google Scholar, Chapter VII; S. M. Lipset, Political Man, New York, Doubleday, Chapter II has also attempted to establish a correlation between political instability and authoritarian regimes and low economic development.

16 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, and Huntington, S. P., ‘Civilian Control of the Military: A Theoretical Statement’ in Eulau, H., et al., Political Behaviour, New York, Free Press, 1956 Google Scholar.

17 S. P. Huntington, ‘Political Development and Political Decay’, World Politics, April, 1965.

18 Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations, p. 6.

19 See for instance, Finer, S. E., ‘One-Party Regimes in Africa: Reconsiderations’, Government and Opposition, II, No. 4, 0710, 1967, pp. 491508 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 The most important exponent of the former position is Finer, The Man on Horseback, and of the latter, Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations, and Huntington, The Soldier and the State. To be sure Finer does not ignore the organizational qualities of the military any more than do Janowitz and Huntington ignore the influences of civilian values and institutions. But they are in the main taken into account respectively as qualifying or complicating factors rather than as an elaborated part of the theory (with the possible exception of Huntington’s analysis of subjective control of the military establishment).

21 Viz. the discussion of summary variables and their uses in Easton, D., A System Analysis of Political Life, New York, 1965 Google Scholar.

22 This criticism of the generalizing ideal-type comes up in various forms in Parsons, T., The Structure of Social Action, New York, 1937, pp. 606–9Google Scholar; Udy, S. H., ‘Bureaucracy and Rationality in Weber’s Organization Theory’, American Sociological Review, Vol. XXIV, 1959, p. 792 Google Scholar; and Blau, P. M., ‘Critical Remarks on Weber’s Theory of Authority’, American Political Science Review, Vol. LVII, 1963, pp. 309–11Google Scholar.

23 The terminology is hardly appropriate for the communist countries where ‘public associations’ (the party, the unions, co-operatives, etc.) would be more fitting.

24 See for instance the discussion of ‘reform coups’ in S. P. Huntington’s ‘Patterns of Violence in World Politics’ in Huntington (ed.), Changing Patterns of Military Politics.

25 These are similar to but not quite the same as the second and third of Finer’s criteria given above. They also correspond though again very approximately with Huntington’s distinction between the scope of political institutions and the degree of their institutionalization in his article ‘Political Development and Political Decay’.

26 Shils, E. A., ‘Centre and Periphery’ in The Logic of Personal Knowledge, essays presented to Michael Polanyi, London, 1961 Google Scholar, and Eisenstadt, S. N., Modernisation: Protest and Change, Englewood, New Jersey, 1966 Google Scholar.

27 As in Huntington, ‘Political Development and Political Decay’; also in Shils, E. A., ‘Demagogues and Cadres’ in Pye, L. (ed.), Communications and Political Development, Princeton, 1963 Google Scholar. R. Putnam is able to show in ‘Towards Explaining Military Intervention in Latin America’, World Politics, October, 1967, however, that various indicators of political mobilization are negatively correlated with domestic violence and military intervention, controlling for levels of economic development as far as that continent is concerned. It should, however, be pointed out that cross-sectional data of this kind do not permit one to infer historical trends.

28 The affair of the Red Guards in China may seem to have been a temporary regression when mobilization preceded institutionalization, though it is not clear how much of this was deliberate.

29 Viz. Janowitz, M., The Special Control of Escalated Riots, Chicago, Centre for Policy Studies, University of Chicago, 1968 Google Scholar. Conventional arms like tanks, artillery and bayonets are not the most effective instruments of domestic coercion, still less so is the more sophisticated weaponry of the nuclear age.

30 Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations, pp. 40–9.

31 Parsons, T., ‘The Place of Force in the Social Process’ in Eckstein, H. (ed.), Internal War, New York, 1964 Google Scholar.

32 See Ambler, J. S., The French Army in Politics 1945–1962, Ohio, 1966 Google Scholar.

33 Eisenstadt, S. N., The Political Systems of Empires, New York, 1965 Google Scholar.

34 Viz. Luckham, The Nigerian Military; Zolberg, ‘Military Intervention in the New States of Tropical Africa’.

35 For an account of the attempted putschs against Hitler in Germany in 1944 and against de Gaulle in Algiers in 1961, see Lang, K., ‘The Military Putsch in a Developed Political Culture’ in van Dorn, J. (ed.), Armed Forcer and Society, The Hague, 1968 Google Scholar.

36 For a lucid discussion of the concept of institutional and organizational boundaries, see Easton, D., A Framework for Political Analysis, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965, Chapter 5Google Scholar.

37 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, Part I and ‘Civilian Control of the Military: A Theoretical Statement’.

38 Easton, A Framework for Political Analysis; Huntington, ‘Political Development and Political Decay’; and Deutsch, K., The Nerves of Government, New York, 1966 Google Scholar.

39 This could, of course, be said to be true of all military institutions. However, there are degrees of permeation and differentiation and this is what our ideal-typical formulation is intended to stress.

40 Eldersveld, S. J., Political Parties: A Behavioral Analysis, Chicago, 1964, Chapter 1Google Scholar.

41 See Skolnick, J., Justice Without Trial, New York, 1966, Chapters 6 and 7Google Scholar.

42 Ambler, The French Army in Politics.

43 Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations, p. 31.

44 Blau, P. and Scott, W. R., Formal Organisations, San Francisco, 1962, PP. 54–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Except when explicit account is taken of covert forms of military influence as in Finer, Man on Horseback, Chapter X. Even then, however, concentration on the level of military intervention as such would make it difficult to account for the structural and behavioural similarities of the military and of the regimes in countries where military intervention has been pushed to different levels such as Haiti, Batista’s Cuba and the Dominican Republic and Paraguay, but where the military role in society and politics is very similar.

46 Though when effective revolutionary movements become established one may think in terms of two parallel sets of political and military institutions, each of which has its own distinctive civil-military balance and each set its relations with the other set, whether of warfare as in South Vietnam, of political conflict and inter-dependence as in Jordan.

47 This and the ‘subjective control’ category derive from Huntington’s theory of civilian control of the military, the most succinct formulation of which is in Huntington, ‘Civilian Control of the Military: A Theoretical Statement’.

48 Lang, ‘The Military Putsch in a Developed Political Culture’.

49 Janowitz, ‘The Professional Soldier’, Part VIII.

50 For Sweden and Ireland, see B. Abrahamson, ‘Ideology of the Elite: Conservatism and National Insecurity: Some Notes on the Swedish Military’, and J. A. Jackson, ‘The Irish Army and the Development of the Constabulary Concept’, in van Doom (ed.), Armed Forces and Society.

51 Abrahamson, ‘Ideology of the Elite’.

52 M. Janowitz, ‘Armed Forces and Society: A World Perspective’ in van Doom (ed.), Armed Forces and Society, especially pp. 30–8. The writer is inclined to feel that while this may be a desirable response to the situation, the military establishments concerned, particularly that of the USA cannot necessarily be expected to trim their own sails of their own accord, because of all the other organizational interests that have to be taken into account.

53 See the accounts of the armies and civil-military relations in totalitarian states such as Ionescu, Ghita: The Politics of the European Communist States, London, 1967 Google Scholar; Fainsod, M., How Russia is Ruled, revised edition, Cambridge, 1965, Chapter 14Google Scholar; J. Wiatr, ‘Military Professionalism and Transformations of Class Structure in Poland’ and Garthoff, R. L., ‘The Military in Russia 1861–1965’ in Doom, van (ed.), Armed Forces in Society; Gittings, J., The Role of the Chinese Army, London, 1967 Google Scholar.

54 The account here borrows heavily from Rapoport’s stimulating piece, ‘A Comparative Theory of Military and Political Types’ in Huntington (ed.), Changing Patterns of Military Politics. In time of war the military may of course, dispose of considerable coercive power as in Israel or Switzerland, although the full time military is small and well circumscribed by civilian values.

55 Halpern, B., ‘The Role of the Military in Israel’ in Johnson, (ed.), The Role of the Military in Under-Developed Countries, and Perlmutter, A., Military and Politics in Israel, London, 1969 Google Scholar.

56 S. Encel, ‘The Study of Militarism in Australia,’ in Van Doom, Armed Forces and Society.

57 Viz. Debray, R., Revolution within the Revolution, London, 1967 Google Scholar; Tung, Mao Tse, Selected Military Writings, Peking, 1963 Google Scholar; Taber, R., The War of the Flea, London, 1970 Google Scholar.

58 Elliott-Bateman, M., Defeat in the East: the Mark of Mao Tse Tung on War, London, 1967 Google Scholar.

59 Debray, Revolution within the Revolution.

60 Lasswell, H., ‘The Garrison State’, American Journal of Sociology, XLVI, 01, 1941 Google Scholar.

61 See Major General Mohammed Ayub Khan’s autobiography, Friends Not Masters: A Political Autobiography, London, 1967.

62 For interesting and detailed studies of the South Korean case, see both C. I. Eugene Kim, ‘The South Korean Military Coup of May, 1961: Its Causes and The Social Characteristics of the Leaders’ in van Doom, Armed Forces and Society, and Jae Souk Sohn, ‘Political Dominance and Political Failure: The Role of the Military in the Republic of Korea’ in H. Bienen (ed.), The Military Intervenes, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968. The former deals with the army’s entry into politics, the latter in an interesting way with the problems of army rule and withdrawal.

63 N. Yalman, ‘Intervention and Extrication: The Officer Corps in the Turkish Crises’, in Bienan, The Military Intervenes.

64 The differentiation in Turkey was a radical one, however, and in effect amounted to military withdrawal because Atatürk made his officers choose between going into politics or remaining in the army.

65 L. W. Pye, ‘The Army in Burmese Politics’ in Johnson (ed.), The Role of the Military in Under-developed Countries.

66 Vatikiotis, P. J., Politics and the Military in Jordan: A Study of the Arab Legion 1921–1957, London, 1967 Google Scholar.

67 Viz. for example the analysis of the Nigerian military’s structural weakness in Luckham, The Nigerian Army.

68 Mazrui, ‘Anti-Militarism and Political Militancy in Tanzania’

69 The concept of praetorianism is borrowed from Rapoport’s ‘Comparative Theory of Military and Political Types’. We draw the boundaries of praetorian-ism more narrowly than Rapoport, here, however, as many of the states he would consider praetorian (e.g. Egypt, Pakistan) J. would put into the guardian category because of the relative structural integrity of military boundaries. Even if they may not be as cohesive and effective militarily as the nations-in-arms armies (Israel in particular) with which he contrasts them, they are much more so than those of a truly praetorian army like Syria, Paraguay, Cambodia, Iraq, Dahomey or possibly Nigeria.

70 P. B. Springer, ‘Disunity and Disorder: Factional Politics in the Argentine Military’, in H. Bienen (ed.), The Military Intervenes.

71 G. S. Pauker, ‘The Role of the Military in Indonesia’ in Johnson (ed.), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries. The increase in the army’s cohesion was what eventually enabled it to overthrow Sukarno, as the latter had previously been most successful in playing one military clique against the other. Similarly the basis of General Mobutu’s power and the restoration of political order in the Congo was the restoration of discipline in the army, which at one point shortly after independence had split in three separate parts.

72 With the active help, it should be said, of some of the generals themselves. Mexico would now, of course, no longer qualify as a praetorian country, being probably somewhere between the guardian and objective control categories.

73 Pye emphasizes the importance of both the political alliance between the bureaucracy and the army in Burma, and the colonial administration and its traditions as an important positive reference group for military patterns of action and political behaviour (e.g. the hankering after ‘order’); Pye, ‘The Army in Burmese-Politics’.

74 Parsons, ‘The Place of Force in the Social Process’.

75 Zolberg, A. R., ‘The Structure of Political Conflict in the New States of Tropical Africa’, American Political Science Review, LXII, No. 1 (1968)Google Scholar.

76 Luckham, A. R., ‘The Nigerian Military: Disintegration or Integration?’ in Nigerian Politics and Military Rule: Prelude to be Civil War, ed. Panter-Brick, S. K., London, Athlone Press, 1970 Google Scholar.

77 Bohannan, P., ‘Extra-Processual Events in Tiv Political Institutions’, American Anthropologist, LX, 02, 1958 Google Scholar.

78 Fluharty, V., Dance of the Millions: Military Rule and Social Revolution in Columbia 1930–1956, Pittsburgh, 1957 Google Scholar.