Sharing Saddles: Oligarchs and Officers on Horseback in Egypt and Tunisia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Drew Holland Kinney
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
French And English ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
Party Members ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Regime Transitions

Abstract Research on the military's removal from politics overemphasizes the attitudes and interests of officers. Civilians are portrayed as incapable of confronting refractory men with guns. This essay compares regime transitions in Egypt (2011–2013) and Tunisia (2011–2014) to show that unified civilian elites strengthen and polarized elites undermine civilian control of the armed forces. Research for the cases is based on interviews with Egyptian and Tunisian businesspersons, party members, and civil society activists; the International Consortium of Investigation Journalists's tax-offshoring database; loan disbursements from the IMF and World Bank; and secondary sources in Arabic, French, and English. The cases reveal novel insights about the military's removal from politics in fledgling democracies. Pleasing Egypt's officers did not shield President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood from a coup in July 2013 because Morsi and the Brotherhood threatened the wealth and power of civilian politicians and oligarchs. In Tunisia, Islamist and non-Islamist political and economic elites pushed democratization for fear of another Ben “Ali-style kleptocracy. Even during crisis in 2013, united civilian elites contained opposition calls for army intervention. The study's findings suggest that democratizers are not at the mercy of soldiers, but rather civilian leaders have the power to sideline their armies.

US Civil-Military Relations in the Gray Zone

2020 ◽  
pp. 263-282
Author(s):  
Sarah Sewall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Gray Zone ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
The Face ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

This chapter argues that the changing character of conflict demands rethinking U S civil-military relations. The United States has long relied on a nuclear deterrent and conventional military superiority to defend itself, but its adversaries have changed the rules of the game to exploit civilian vulnerabilities in the U S homeland using non kinetic tools. To ensure continued civilian control of the military use of force and effective management of competition below the threshold of war, civilian leaders must assume greater responsibility for the political and operational management of hostilities in the Gray Zone. Because civilian leaders are underprepared for this new global competition, they will be tempted to default to conventional military solutions. Traditional civil-military frameworks did not envision permanent conflict or the centrality of civilian terrain, capabilities, and operational responsibilities. The United States needs civilian-led tools and approaches to effectively avoid the dual extremes of national immobilization in the face of non kinetic threats and inadvertent escalation of conflict without civilian authorization or intent. Civilian adaptation could also diminish the traditional role of the armed forces in defending the nation. The United States must rewire the relationship of the military and civilians through its decisions about how to manage Gray Zone competition.

scholarly journals Religion and Military Security: The Military Still Matters

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Opeoluwa Adisa Oluyemi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Online Data ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Military Security ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The debate on changes and continuity in the field of security studies before and aftermath of the Cold War expounds certain security issues that have been reformed or changed and those that continue to be essential security concerns after the Cold War. The pervasiveness of military security might have been reconstructed at the aftermath of the Cold War but has remained ubiquitous despite scholarly argumentative prepositions debating its declination. This article uses secondary sources of data analysis by obtaining necessary information from textbooks, libraries, academic journals, online data and articles to examine the nexus between religion and violence leading to the renaissance of international terrorism after the attack of 9/11 that had propelled the involvement of military armed forces in domestic security of democratic governments constituting a debatable encumbrance to the principles of objective civilian control of the military entrenched in the liberal democracy and a justifiable argument for the potency of military security in the present liberal democratic states. It theoretically instantiates the emerging domestic role of the military armed forces signalizing the subjective control of civil-military relations in incongruousness to the objective control as expounded under military professionalism of Samuel Huntington.

CC ا‎ العرص‎ / قاتل‎ انتخبوا‎# “Sisi is a Killer”/“Elect the Pimp”

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-191
Author(s):  
Amy Austin Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Vice President ◽  
First Year ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Supreme Council ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Egyptian History

The first year of the counterrevolution under interim President Adly Mansour is covered in chapter 6. In contrast to the period of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, when men in uniform ruled Egypt, after the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi the authorities created a semblance of civilian rule, installing a civilian interim president, a civilian vice president, and a civilian prime minister. Nonetheless, there was no civilian control of the armed forces. The goal during the first wave of the counterrevolution was not only to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood from politics but also to crush any group that could mobilize for street protests, regardless of ideology. It was the bloodiest period in modern Egyptian history. After carrying out numerous massacres of the Muslim Brotherhood, the state turned to secular and independent activists next. The Protest Law passed in November 2013 essentially criminalized even small and entirely peaceful protests. The regime was slowly able to regain control of the streets and university campuses. The nature of the coup determined the nature of the crackdown: precisely because it was a “coup from below,” characterized by mass protests that reached deep and wide into Egyptian society, the crackdown had to reach this extent as well.

Colombia: Civilian Control and Militarized Repression

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Aviles
Keyword(s):  
Political Stability ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
Central Pillar ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The 19Th Century

The relationship between the Colombian armed forces and civilian leaders within the state has been marked historically with the continuity of civilian control and the general avoidance of military coups or regimes. After a series of major civil wars during the 19th century, civil–military relations were guided by the need to preserve the power of economic and political elites, with the military consistently acting as a central pillar in the survival of this elite. Interestingly, in the context of civil–military relations in Latin America, Colombia has been a model of how a regime can pair formal “civilian control” with intensive levels of state repression and violence against opposing forces within civil society. This model has been maintained during periods of relative political stability as well as during periods of widespread internal conflict. Thus, illustrating the limits that formal institutional arrangements within the Colombian state have led to shifts in the behavior of its military.

Italy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Coticchia
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
First Century ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the bipolar era, Italy has regularly undertaken military interventions around the world, with an average of 8,000 units employed abroad in the twenty-first century. Moreover, Italy is one of the principal contributors to the UN operations. The end of the cold war represented a turning point for Italian defence, allowing for greater military dynamism. Several reforms have been approved, while public opinion changed its view regarding the armed forces. This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive perspective of the process of transformation that occurred in post-cold-war Italian defence, looking at the evolution of national strategies, military doctrines, and the structure of forces. After a brief literature review, the study highlights the process of transformation of Italian defeshnce policy since 1989. Through primary and secondary sources, the chapter illustrates the main changes that occurred, the never-ending cold-war legacies, and key challenges.

The Contradictions of “Party Supremacy”: Lessons from Nigeria’s Eighth National Assembly

Politeia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
'Tola Odubajo ◽  
Derin Ologbenla
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Critical Dimension ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Critical Elements ◽  
Fourth Republic ◽  
Democratic Experience ◽  
Political Office ◽  
Party Members

As one of the critical elements of democracy, a functional political party plays major roles in the political process of a state. One such role is the provision of a platform by which its members emerge as elected officials in government. A critical dimension of Nigeria’s democratic experience in the Fourth Republic is the issue of conflict of interests among party oligarchies and party members elected to political office. This article attempts to interrogate the causal factors of this development by analysing the triggers of divergences within political parties whose members supposedly share similar ideological leanings. Specifically, the article considers the causes and effects of the issues thrown up in the aftermath of the emergence processes of the principal officers in the two chambers of parliament of the eighth National Assembly. This it does in the context of the normative interpretation of “party supremacy”.  As samples, we isolate three cases, after which the qualitative method is employed to elaborate on the data gathered from secondary sources.

Safeguarding Democracy: Powersharing and Democratic Survival

2017 ◽  
Vol 111 (4) ◽  
pp. 686-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN A.T. GRAHAM ◽  
MICHAEL K. MILLER ◽  
KAARE W. STRØM
Keyword(s):  
Minority Group ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Electoral Accountability ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Ethnic Quotas ◽  
Democratic Survival ◽  
Constitutional Protections

Democracy is often fragile, especially in states recovering from civil conflict. To protect emerging democracies, many scholars and practitioners recommend political powersharing institutions, which aim to safeguard minority group interests. Yet there is little empirical research on whether powersharing promotes democratic survival, and some concern that it limits electoral accountability. To fill this gap, we differentiate between inclusive, dispersive, and constraining powersharing institutions and analyze their effects on democratic survival from 1975 to 2015 using a global dataset. We find sharp distinctions across types of powersharing and political context. Inclusive powersharing, such as ethnic quotas, promotes democratic survival only in post-conflict settings. In contrast, dispersive institutions such as federalism tend to destabilize post-conflict democracies. Only constraining powersharing consistently facilitates democratic survival regardless of recent conflict. Institution-builders and international organizations should therefore prioritize institutions that constrain leaders, including independent judiciaries, civilian control of the armed forces, and constitutional protections of individual and group rights.

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.

The Expanding Domestic Role of Western Armed Forces and its Implications

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jori Pascal Kalkman
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Military Police ◽  
Military Organizations ◽  
The Military ◽  
Domestic Roles

Abstract The domestic roles of Western armed forces are expanding. Although there is broad academic agreement that this trend is widespread, research on its implications has been relatively scarce. Here, I examine three debates that have emerged in the wake of expanding domestic military roles. They include: discussion on the origins of this trend between functionalists and politically-oriented scholars; its implications for civilian control and civil rights; and its effects on military-police convergence. This is followed by a call for more research on how the expanding domestic roles of Western armed forces relate to domestic civil-military collaboration, the management of military organizations, military visibility and reputation, perceptions of new tasks within the military, and the scale of this trend. A concluding section makes a case for drawing more academic attention to this phenomenon.

Controlling Blue Berets: The Consequences of Political Neglect in the Case of Uruguay’s Participation in Peacekeeping

2019 ◽  
pp. 0095327X1987721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julián González Guyer ◽  
Nicole Jenne
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Test ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Policy Management ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Democratic Rule ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Peacekeeping has widely been seen as conducive to submit the military to democratic rule. We put the assumption to an empirical test based on the case of Uruguay, today a fully democratic state that has consistently ranked among the world’s top peacekeeping contributors per capita. Specifically, we ask whether participation in peacekeeping has increased civilian control over the military. To answer this question, we focus on three aspects of democratic civil–military relations: civilian oversight, civilian policy management, and armed forces–society relations. We conclude that peacekeeping has done little to trigger greater involvement of civilians in the area of military and defense policy but that it contributed to reduce the gap between the armed forces and society. Nevertheless, due to political neglect by civilian authorities, the state of civil–military relations is one of subordinate military autonomy short of ideal, even if it does not represent a threat to democratic rule.

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