David Kuehn

Beyond the fallacy of coup-ism: conceptualizing civilian control of the military in emerging democracies

It is consensus in the democratization literature that civilian control of the military is a necessary ingredient for democracy and democratic consolidation. However, there is considerable disagreement on what civilian control of the military exactly entails and there is a lack of solid theoretical arguments for how weak or absent civilian control affects democratic governance. Furthermore, a considerable portion of the research literature is captured by the fallacy of coup-ism, ignoring the many other forms in which military officers can constrain the authority of democratically elected political leaders to make political decisions and get them implemented. This article addresses these lacunae by providing a new conceptual framework for the analysis of civil–military relations in emerging democracies. From democracy theory it derives a definition of civilian control as a certain distribution of decision-making power between civilian leaders and military officers. Based on this definition, the authors develop a five-dimensional concept of civilian control, discuss the effects of weakly institutionalized civilian control on the quality of democracy and address the chances for democratic consolidation.

Democratization and Civilian Control in Asia

PART I Conceptualizing Civilian Control oft he Military Explaining Civilian Control of the Military in New Democracies PART II South Korea. Purges and Presidential Prerogatives Taiwan. From Martial Law to Civilian Control Indonesia. The Democratization of Personal Control Bangladesh. From Militarized Politics to Politicized Military The Philippines. Civil-Military Symbiosis under the Veneer of Civilian Rule Thailand. Civilian Control Deterred Pakistan. Military-Guided Transitions to Elected Government and the Failure of Civilian Control PART III Conclusion. Contours, Causes, and Consequences of Civilian Control

Explaining Civil-Military Relations in New Democracies: Structure, Agency and Theory Development

This article discusses the structure-agency problem in explaining civilian control of the military in new democracies. The authors first provide a systematic analysis of the core contents of the structure-agency problem and its implications for theory-building in civil-military research: the agential entities whose interactions are constitutive of civil-military relations, the relevant environmental factors, and the theoretical argument which links agents’ behaviour with the environment. Based on these meta-theoretical deliberations, the authors analyze four recent attempts to explicitly connect structure and agency in explaining civil-military relations in new democracies. The analysis shows that while being important contributions to theory development in the field, none of these theories have consistently dealt with the agency-structure problem in explaining civil-military relations in new democracies.

Democratization and Civilian Control of the Military in Taiwan

Over the last 20 years, Taiwan has witnessed an impressive transition from authoritarian one-party rule to liberal democracy. This included considerable changes in the relations between the civilian political elites and the armed forces. While under the emergency laws of the authoritarian regime the military had been a powerful political force, during democratization the elected civilians have managed to curb military political power and have successively widened their influence over former exclusively military prerogatives. This article argues that the development of Taiwans civil–military relations can be explained as the result of civilians using increasingly robust strategies to enhance their influence over the military. This was made possible by a highly beneficial combination of historical conditions and factors inside and outside the military that strengthened the political power of the civilian elites and weakened the militarys bargaining power. The article finds that even though partisan exploitation of civilian control instruments could potentially arouse civil–military conflict in the future, civil–military relations in general will most likely remain supportive of the further consolidation of Taiwans democracy.

Midwives or gravediggers of democracy? The military’s impact on democratic development

ABSTRACT The political role of the military and its impact on the emergence, persistence and consolidation of new democracies has generated a large body of scholarship. In the light of military coups in a number of Third Wave democracies such as Ecuador (2000), Thailand (2006 and 2014), Honduras (2006) and Mali (2012), the return to electoral competition in a number of military-dominated regimes, and the military’s pivotal role during the Arab Spring, this research has recently focused on the forms, reasons and consequences of military contestation on democratic development. This special issue contributes to this recent scholarship by analysing both the potentially beneficial as well as the deleterious implications of military contestation on democratic transitions, quality and persistence in different world regions. This article introduces the special issue by providing a broader context for the four individual contributions and relates their findings to the recent theoretical and empirical literature on the military’s role as a midwife or gravedigger of democracy.

Conditions of military contestation in populist Latin America

ABSTRACT Latin America experienced recurring episodes of populism, and of military reaction against populists, during the twentieth century, frequently ending in coups d’état. In the twenty-first century, military coups appear to have died out even as populist regimes returned during the third wave of democracy. This paper examines military contestation in populist regimes, both left and right, and how it has changed in the contemporary period. Combining fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Latin American presidencies (1982–2012) and four focused case analyses, we find that military contestation in contemporary populist regimes is driven by radical presidential policies that threaten or actually violate the institutional interests of key elites, among them the military, which in turn is facilitated by the interplay of political, social, economic, and international conditions. Counterintuitively, two of these conditions, the presence of rents and regime capacity for mass mobilization, operate in theoretically unexpected ways, contributing to military contestation.

Are there really two cultures? A pilot study on the application of qualitative and quantitative methods in political science

In their 2012 publication A Tale of Two Cultures, Gary Goertz and James Mahoney argue that empirical research in the social sciences aiming at causal inference can be differentiated into a qualitative and a quantitative methodological culture. The two cultures differ fundamentally in how researchers approach and implement empirical studies. The argument is well laid out and comprehensively illustrated, but the empirical validity of the two cultures hypothesis has not yet been evaluated systematically. This note introduces a research project that aims to test the two cultures hypothesis via an empirical analysis of how qualitative and quantitative methods are applied. To determine whether there is a qualitative and quantitative method culture, the researchers initially sampled 30 articles from three journals (Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, World Politics) in the 2008–2012 period. Based on this dataset, no evidence was found for the existence of coherent systems of methods practices in political science.

Thailand: Civilian Control Deterred

In Thailand, the military has been involved in politics for most of the twentieth century. It ruled the country either through personal dictators or within the framework of institutionalized military rule from the 1930s to 1973, with only a brief interregnum from 1944 to 1947 (Yawnghwe, 1997). In the 1970s, a process of political transformation began that culminated in Thailand’s transition to democracy in May 1992. Under the new democratic rules, the military’s political role became more complex. The Royal Thai Armed Forces (RTAF) refrained from direct political involvement and focused on protecting the monarchy as well as furthering their own corporate and security interests. At the same time, the military remained a political force through its linkages, both as an institution and as individuals, to the new elites of party politics, to the monarchy and to its political network and associated institutions (Chai-anan, 1997). Therefore, in order to properly understand civil—military relations after May 1992, the complexities of the political role of the monarchy and its links to civilian and military elites must be accounted for. Democratization and civilian control were to be realized only to the extent that they did not threaten the position of the ‘network monarchy’ (McCargo, 2005) or the ideas that underpinned its power (Hewison & Kengkij, 2010: 180). This became obvious during the premiership of Thaksin Shinawatra (2001–2006), whose government attempted to sever the relationship between the military and the monarchy.

Democratic Control of the Military

Democratic control of the military addresses one of the most pressing, relevant and broadly discussed problems in the history of social order and political organization: how can the unarmed elected representatives of the people establish, maintain and exert dominance over the military, an organization that due to its overwhelming coercive capabilities potentially is a constant threat to social order and stability. Democratic control, however, comprises more than the mere absence of a military take-over of the government. It also requires that elected decision-makers have effective authority and oversight over defense and military policy; that the mechanisms, instruments and institutions that ensure democratic control over defense and military policy work effectively; and that military subordination under democratic civilian leadership is achieved without undermining the military’s social function. This chapter provides an overview of the scholarship on these aspects of democratic control in both established and new democracies, and surveys its different analytical perspectives and recent empirical findings.

Dictators and their secret police: coercive institutions and state violence, by Sheena Chestnut Greitens

Dictators and their secret police: coercive institutions and state violence, by Sheena Chestnut Greitens David Kuehn To cite this article: David Kuehn (2018) Dictators and their secret police: coercive institutions and state violence, by Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Democratization, 25:8, 1548-1549, DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2018.1469005 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2018.1469005