Military Politics Midterm 1

Why is it important to study the military?

-Most powerful coercive instiituion, responsible for security

-Also made up of people from society

Describe ideal civil-military relations in a democracy?

-Military fully accepts authority of civilian government

-Civilians grant military autonomy

In a democracy, what are the central objectives of the civilian leadership with respect to the military?

-Keep military submissive

-Limit challenges to authority

-Inculcate military with belief in demoncracy

-Keep military well funded

What are the central objectives of a military in a democracy?

-Maximize institutional interests, war-making

-Budget, legal protection, and status

What is the central civil-military problem that all democracies with a military face?

-Military must be strong enough to defend and for that it needs autonomy, yet too much strength and autonomy could lead to it threatening civilian governance

Outline the ways in which a military can damage civil-military relations in a democracy?

-Allowing itself to become politicized

-Threatening civilian leadership

-Failing to protect the state

-Policing

Describe how can civilians damage civil-military relations in a democracy?

-Involving themselves too much in internal military affairs

-Politicizing the military via populists or polarization

-Not funding it enough

According to Robinson, why is the military a dangerous instrument?

-Dangerous due to risk of hyper-polarization politicizing it

-Risk decreasing effectiveness and destroying democratic norms

Why are professional militaries vulnerable to populists?

-A very valuable target for populists

-Catch 22 situation

What distinction does Krebs draw between the symbolic use of fallen soldiers and the

institutional role of senior military officers? Why does he argue that populists are drawn

to one while being hostile to the other?

-Populists drawn to fallen soldiers as they can exploited for popularity

-Military officals can serve as institutional protectors, constraining populists

Explain why are civil-military relations in postcolonial states particularly challenging?

-Ethnic stacking resulting in high coup rates, low professionalization, and weak effectiveness

Discuss three coup-proofing strategies that countries use?

-Enclave units

-Foreign Soldiers

-Diversification

How does political polarization threaten the military?

-Push military towards politics, harming reputation, increasing risk of mutiny, and threatening effectiveness

Why are populists drawn to the military?

-Drawn to the popularity of military and military as a symbol of national strength

According to Taş, how does populist logic, particularly the claim to exclusively represent "the people" reshape the relationship between elected civilian leaders and the military? What distinguishes populist civilian control from liberal democratic civilian control?

-Forces military to be loyal to populist or risk appearing to be anti-democratic

-Populist civilian control is personalistic rather than tied to constitution or democratic ideals

Taş connects populist ideology to specific changes in military recruitment, promotion, and institutional loyalty. Drawing on his argument, explain why a populist leader might

simultaneously praise the military in public while purging it institutionally

-Praise it to be seen close to the military, purge it to make it easier to take over

What is a military coup?

-Overt attempt by military or elites to unseat government by unconstitutional means

What is the difference between coups and mutinies?

-Coups are attempts to overthrow state, mutinies are against military leadership

-Coups primarily led by officers and elites, mutinies by rank and file

-Lowering rates of coups compared to rising of mutinies

What is the failure rate of coups? Why do coups fail?

-About half fail, due to a lack of coordination

What is ethnic stacking? Why did colonial and postcolonial states turn to this strategy?

-Deliberate over-representation of a specific ethnic group in military

-Colonial turned to it to more easily control areas

-Postcolonial turned to stabilize country in short term

Why are ethnically stacked militaries particularly vulnerable to coups during transitions out of colonialism or authoritarianism?

-They threaten pre-existing power structures

Why are democratic militaries reluctant to police protests?

-They fall outside their institutional mission, they fear legal prosecution, and they may share identities with protesters

How do militaries in authoritarian states respond to the demand to suppress protests?

-Respond by backing the state, exiting, or even siding with protestors

 Using the framework of Pion-Berlin and Aćacio, analyze a scenario in which a Latin

American president orders the military to suppress a large-scale protest movement.

-In Peru, military restrained themselves as they fear being prosecuted, have a distaste for police work, and share an identity with protesters

Albrecht and Ohl's framework was developed to explain military behavior in authoritarian regimes. Could it also apply to democracies? Why or why not?

-Depends on whether or not the democracy is cohesive or not

Many readings treat the military as an institution with its own interests, culture, and

capacity for autonomous judgment, not simply as a tool of whoever holds power. Drawing on different readings, construct an argument about what factors most reliably explain whether militaries act as obedient instruments of political authority or as independent institutional actors.

-How strong the civil-military relationship is, aka whether or not its officers believe in the subservience of the military to civilians and whether or not populists exist/polarization is rampant

What factors explain extremism in militaries?

-Lack of vetting, lack of monitoring, closed off nature, and value of soldiers

Pape et al. find that military service does not uniformly predict support for insurrection. The relationship is conditional on other factors. What are those conditioning factors?

-Self selection, PTSD/disillusionment, and lack of support transitioning away from military life

What are different forms of military rule?

-Juntas, military strongmen, soft military rule, and transition military rule

Why is military rule dangerous for a country?

-Leads to instability, unable to deal with domestic issues, likely to start wars, vulnerable to economic collapse, and risk perpetuating coup-cycle

A recurring theme across the readings on the topic of extremism in the military is the

problem of institutional denial — the tendency of military organizations to minimize,

delay, or deflect responses to internal extremism. Why does this pattern persists and

what would it take to break it?

-Going after issue would destabilize the military, values loyalty, cohesion, and reputation, acknowledging problem undermines these

-Need to get an outside agent to provide oversight