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Setbacks to Political Institutionalisation by Praetorianism in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Praetorianism has been authoritatively defined as a situation in which ‘the military class of a given society exercises independent political power within it by virtue of an actual or threatened use of military force’.1 A praetorian state, by elaboration, is one in which the military tends to intervene and potentially could dominate the political system. The political processes of this state favor the development of the military as the core group and the growth of its expectations as a ruling class; its political leadership (as distinguished from bureaucratic, administrative and managerial leadership) is chiefly recruited from the military, or from groups sympathetic, or at least not antagonistic, to the military. Constitutional changes are effected and sustained by the militaty, and the army frequently intervenes in the government.2

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

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Page 415 note 4 Feit, loc. cit. p. 487.

Page 415 note 5 Nordlinger, loc. cit. p. 1137.

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Page 418 note 1 The combination of pretentiousness and contempt in the military's attitude towards the citizenry is well captured in the claim of the leaders of the Argentinian armed forces, following their take-over of power in 1961, that they took that action in order to defend the nation against the people who, by allowing themselves to be ‘seduced from the path of rectitude’, had given a political mandate to the wrong leaders. See The Times (London), 1 April 1961; and Mazrui, Violence and Thought, pp. 10–11fn.

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Page 426 note 2 Ibid. p. 254.

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Page 427 note 2 Ibid.

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