Military

Regimes

February 9, 2017
 Geddes, et al, 2014: Military Rule
To defend against foreign and domestic enemies,
governments organize military forces supplied
with weapons and trained to use them.
Weapons and training make the military
potentially dangerous to those who pay their
salaries.
Since WWII, military officers have overthrown
many civilian governments.
They sometimes return power to civilians after a
few days, often they dont. They establish
military rule, led by a single military strongman
or a junta representing the officer corps.
 Military Rule
Military rule has governance by men who
specialize in armed force and maintaining order
rather than in political affairs.
More accustomed to hierarchy and obedience
than to bargaining.
Because their training and experience differ from
those of civilian politicians, military rulers
sometimes make different policy choices than
would civilian autocrats.
The areas in which choices differ include war,
response to opposition, and whether to end their
own intervention in politics.
 Military Rule
Despite their specialization in use of force, military
regimes are surprisingly fragile.
When officers seize control of governments, they still
retain control over weapons and the men who use them.
So it seems they would have advantages in coercive
capacity relative to other ruling groups:
---the abilities to deter opposition through threat of force
and to use force to defeat opposition.
---highly coherent and disciplined internal organization
These apparent advantages, however, do not help military
officers to maintain power. Military regimes survive less
long than democracies or other kind of autocracies. Why?
 Military Rule
The behavior of military rulers challenges expectations
in other ways as well. We might expect the military to
use force against threats to their rule.
Yet, military regimes faced with economic crisis or
active popular opposition often negotiate a return to
barracks instead.
Prominent theories of dictatorship see autocratic
political actors as agents of the rich but military leaders
do not routinely represent the rich or indeed other
societal interests that may ally with them.
 Rule by Military Institution
Military-led autocracy embodies two distinctive forms
of authoritarian rule
Domination of decision making by a group of officers
representing the military institution: military regime
Brazil, 1964 85: Initiated via a coup supported by
great majority of officers and consultation among them
remained important through the many years of military
control.
Rule by the military institution implies not only that a
man in uniform occupies the top post but also that other
officers have some political influence. The strongest
indicator is the ability other officers have on term limits
and succession.
 Military Strongman Rule
Dictatorship controlled by a single officer absent
elite constraints is called military strongman rule.
Idi Amin in Uganda: Other officers held some
key positions in the dictatorship with little
influence on basic political decisions. Amin had
some of them killed.
Military strongmen are made in a process that
usually occurs after seizures of power especially
when the military government is unstructured.
How decisions will be made and enforced may
be unclear even to participants.
 Military Strongman Rule
Military strongman rule comes out of bargaining
and conflict among high-ranking officers.
The man initially chosen to lead the dictatorship
needs the continued cooperation of other officers
in order to retain his post because any other
officer with control over a few hundred troops
could potentially oust him.
The military leader needs to make credible
commitments to share spoils and policy influence
with other officers in return for their commitment
to refrain from overthrowing him.
 Military Strongman Rule
The military leader can take a number of actions to
make his commitment more credible: retire from
active duty in order to limit his ability to control
other officers careers and postings and delegate
ministries and control over security forces to other
officers
The ability of other junta members to commit their
subordinates to refrain from a countercoup is more
problematic. In a disciplined, unified military, high-
ranking officers can credibly bargain on behalf of
their subordinates who are expected to follow
orders.
These bargains stabilize collegial military regimes.
 Military Strongman Rule
In factionalized militaries, junta members cannot
guarantee the obedience of subordinate officers.
Leaders may try sharing spoils/influence more broadly
by creating larger military committees to rule. They
also have strong incentives to build a civilian support
base, to counterbalance potential military opposition.
An organized civilian support network, a party, may
liberate the military leader from dependence on other
officers and creates the opportunity to play the
factions against each other.
Strongmen are the ones that are especially good at
manipulating factions within ruling alliance and
thereby marginalize other officers from decision
making.
 Military Strongman Rule
This designation implies the dictator is relatively
unconstrained by the need to consult with other
officers. This lack of constraint implies the
dictators decisions depend on their own
preferences and expectations about their personal
futures.
Research showing that their fear of imprisonment
and assassination after getting kicked out may
motivate them to initiate diversionary wars
suggests individual decision making rather than
collegial.
 Military Rule and Violence
Because militaries have professional expertise in
the use of force, it seems they would use more
violence against domestic opponents than
autocrats not from the military.
But the relationship between military rule and
repression is not completely straightforward.
Pinochet dictatorship in Chile may be a good
example of showing a dictators incentives to
avoid using regular military force to repress
opposition.
 Chile after 1973 Coup
During the first months after the 1973 coup, the
responsibilities of officers who were assigned to
administer subnational areas included dealing
with domestic enemies.
Extremist commanding officers killed many
civilians thought to be leftists, sometimes after a
perfunctory trial.
Other commanding officers enforced preexisting
democratic legal norms and treated political
prisoners humanely.
 Chile after 1973 Coup
The junta decided to create a specialized and
centralized internal security service because of
---its inability to control the implementation of
repression under the existing arrangement
---the threat to military unity posed by internal
disagreements over how regime should treat its
political prisoners
Research shows deep reluctance of most military
officers to carry out domestic repression.
Although the hypothesis that military is
especially repressive is plausible, the story could
be more complicated.
 Military Rule and Repression
Although military governments commit human
rights violations, regular officers and soldiers
may not carry out most atrocities.
Case studies show that dictators often use
internal security services to spy and to
counterbalance the regular military.
Officers from the regular military may head such
internal security agencies, but the agencies are
often not included within the regular military
chain of command or staffed by regular soldiers.
 Military Rule and Repression
This could be about being unwilling to take the
distasteful task of internal security but also about
officers fearing their subordinates will disobey
orders to fire on civilians.
Soldiers have resisted using arms against their
fellow citizens at crucial historical junctures.
Serbian militarys unwillingness to shoot anti-
Milosevic supporters contributed to the dictators
ouster after fraudulent elections in 2000.
Some military interventions in Africa occurred
when a civilian dictators order to military to shoot
civilians backfired.
 Military Rule and War
Research suggests military strongmen engage in
more civil and international war than other
dictators.
Uncertain hold on power may lead military to
initiate diversionary conflict to shore up domestic
support.
Weeks (2012) shows military strongmen are more
likely to initiate conflict than are juntas and
civilian personalist rulers, who are in turn more
belligerent than dominant-party regimes and
democracies.
 How Military Rule Ends
Factionalism within military regimes can lead to
decisions to return to the barracks. Officers care
more about unity than about remaining in power.
Since they usually exit without being forced out,
they tend to negotiate and are less likely to be
violently removed.
Between 1946-2010, about 43% of military
regimes fell to insurgency and popular uprising or
invasion compared to 64% of dominant-party
regimes and 90% of personalist regimes.
Nearly all nonviolent breakdowns of military
regimes resulted in democratization.
 How Military Rule Ends
Military usually leaves power by overseeing an
election among civilian contenders. In contrast to
dominant-party and personalist regimes,
members of military regimes do not typically run
in transitional elections.
Military incumbents ran in 19% of elections
while incumbents from dominant-party regimes
ran in 83% and personalists in 78% of them.
Incumbent participation in transitional elections
is the strongest predictor of government
harassment of the opposition in transitional
elections.
 Svolik, Chapter 5: Moral Hazard in Authoritarian
Repression and Origins of Military Dictatorships
The military was directly or indirectly involved
in about 30% of all authoritarian governments
between 1946 2008.
What is striking is not only the frequency but
also the distribution of military regimes: They
tend to occur within the same countries.
Military participated in the removal or
installation of two of every three Latin American
leaders while the Communist dictatorships in
Eastern Europe maintained firm control over
their armed forces.
 Why do men with guns obey men without guns in
some countries but not others?

At the heart of the problem of authoritarian

control is the conflict b/w a small elite in power
and the larger population excluded from power.
Dictatorships solve this problem in two principal
ways: cooptation and repression.
Svolik argues origins of military regimes lie in
dictatorships reliance on repression which
entails a fundamental moral hazard: The very
sources that enable the regimes repressive
agents to suppress its opposition also empower
them to act against the regime itself.
 Why do some dictatorships rely heavily on the
military for repression?
Most dictatorships do not rely on militaries for
repression. In fact, everyday repression in
virtually all dictatorships is handled not by
soldiers but rather by the police and specialized
internal security agencies.
However, when opposition to a regime is mass
based, organized and potentially violent, the
military is the only force capable of defeating it.
Soldiers are any dictators repressive agent of last
resort. They understand their pivotal political role
and exploit it by demanding concessions from
government.
 Why do some dictatorships rely heavily on the
military for repression?
Dictatorships that often face organized and violent
opposition give their militaries material resources,
institutional autonomy, and a legal framework that
allows the military to participate in internal repression.
Military-run enterprises in Egypt, Indonesia or import
licenses in Syria
Primary cost is not budgetary but political. The more
indispensable soldiers become in the suppression of
internal opposition, the greater their capacity to turn
against the regime.
Self-rule over personnel, budgetary and procurement
decisions, legal limits on prosecution of military
personnel by civilian governments
 Subordination of Military
Feasible at rare historical junctures.
Russian Revolution and the ensuing civil war
helped Bolsheviks institutionalize measures for
control over an army dominated by imperial
officers.
Civil War in China allowed for a similar
transformation.
Mexican Revolution allowed for the subjugation
and incorporation of Mexican military within a
party that would become PRI.
 Subordination of Military
Democratic transitions provide an opportunity if
dictatorship exits discredited and is not able to resist the
withdrawals of privileges/immunities. e.g. Argentina after
the juntas debacle at the Falklands War
But the military is often able to preserve its autonomy
during democratic transitions, even claim to serve as the
guardian of democracy.
In Turkey, 1961 constitution written under military
supervision established a NSC that formalized the
militarys political role. The Council gradually extended
its influence over government policy and became a
powerful watchdog, sometimes replacing the cabinet as the
center of real power and decision making.
 Subordination of Military
Even dictatorships that do not face mass, organized
and violent threats must deter those who are
excluded from power from challenging the regime.
Most threats come from defectors within the elite
itself or ideological dissenters. Such challenges are
small enough that they do not require systematic
reliance on the military and can be dealt with by
intelligence-gathering security services and police.
The military does not acquire a politically pivotal
role. Cant resist the institutionalization of the
regimes effective political control.
 Why does the Military Intervene in
Politics?

Svolik argues this occurs when bargaining

between a government and a politically pivotal
military over the governments policies or the
militarys autonomy breaks down.
The form and the likely outcome of this
bargaining depend on the magnitude of mass
threats to the regime and the corresponding
degree of militarys political pivotalness.
 Why do Military intervene in politics?
Perfect Political Control obtains when mass threats
to the regime are small. Dictators either do not
need to use the military for internal repression or
they accept some degree of vulnerability to threats
from masses to maintain political control over the
military.
Military Tutelage obtains when mass threats are
greatest. Dictators have no choice but conceding
expansive resources to military. Militarys ability to
intervene is so credible that it does not need to be
carried out in order to compel government to yield
resources and policy concessions.
 Bargaining b/w government & military
Brinkmanship Bargaining takes place when the
magnitude of mass threats is between these two
extremes.
Militarys resources are large enough that it is
tempted to use the threat of intervention to extract
concessions from the government.
The government knows they prefer to obtain
concessions without having to openly intervene.
From the militarys POV political intervention is
costly: (i) it may fail (ii) highlight political
differences within military and may necessitate
purges of officers opposed to intervention
 Bargaining b/w government and military
The governments bargaining dilemma stems from
its position rather than from its power.
Unlike the military, government designs and
implements policy. Like the military, it prefers to
avoid an overt intervention because it wants to stay
in office.
So they bargain! The military has an incentive to
exaggerate its demands while the government tests
militarys true resolve by turning down demands.
Military dictatorships emerge when this push and
pull escalates into an overt military intervention.
 Empirical Test
Svolik evaluates the argument by focusing on
one structural source of mass threats: economic
inequality. Economically unequal dictatorships
frequently confront social unrest, labor strikes a,
land invasions and guerilla attacks.
He looks at the participation of military in the
entry and exit of leaders. The military intervened
in the entry of 291 and the exit of 224 of 738
authoritarian regimes b/w 1946 2002.
He finds strong support for the non-monotonic
relationship between economic inequality and
military intervention.