Defensive development,combative contradictions: towards an international political sociology of global militarism in Africa

ABSTRACT

Drawing on international political sociology, this article shows how the merger of development and security has become part of the ideational architecture that facilitates a new ‘feel-good’ militarism in Africa. Contemporary international reform efforts are designed to restrain military power in the name of development, democracy and civilian oversight, but also to strengthen the coercive capacities of African security institutions and make them more efficient in the global fight against violent extremism. Such defensive development efforts have implications for the historically problematic relationship of the African state with modern forms of organised force, reconfiguring and recalibrating relations and dynamics between the state, military forces and external actors. The article concludes that defensive development is fraught with combative contradictions and risks becoming the handmaiden not only of increased militaristic violence, but also of oppression and the restriction of freedom and democracy.     

International Conflict,International Security Environment,and Military Coups

Why do some countries repeatedly experience military coups while others seem immune? Are countries more prone to military coups when faced with external threats? The answers to these questions still remain contested: While several scholars hold that countries facing external threats are more vulnerable to coups, others argue that such countries are actually more secure from coups. I argue that by failing to distinguish between immediate and acute threats, caused by wars and militarized conflicts, and chronic threats from a state’s international security environment, the existing literature ignores the possibility that these two types of external threats differently affect the likelihood of coups. I propose that wars and militarized conflicts, infrequent and often short lived, decrease coup propensity, while a threatening security environment increases coup risk. I find strong supporting evidence that the presence of chronic international threats increases the likelihood of coups while acute international conflicts lower that likelihood.     

Constraining consolidation: military politics and democracy in Pakistan (2007–2013)

Why do some militaries retain high authoritarian prerogatives during transitions from militarized authoritarian rule? The Pakistan military's 2007 extrication shows that an important part of the answer lies in the level of structural differentiation between the “military government” and the “military institution”. Despite sustained contentious opposition to military rule, the high level of separation between these two military dimensions of the state allowed the institutional military to delink itself from the discredited dictatorship and exit on its own terms. In the post-authoritarian context, the military has preserved its expansive prerogatives by using a variety of adaptive contestation mechanisms – including the mobilization of the media and the judiciary – that act as a continuing source of political instability and uncertainty.     

Failure of authoritarian learning: explaining Burma/Myanmar’s electoral system

What explains why some authoritarian governments fail to take all the steps they can to preserve their positions of power during democratic transitions? This article examines this question using the example of the leading pro-military party in Myanmar, which lost badly to the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the transitioning elections of 2015. This article argues that a key to understanding how the military failed to perpetuate its power in the electoral sphere resides in its choice of electoral system. In 2010, the military junta chose an electoral system, first-past-the-post, that was distinctly ill-suited to preserve its power. We explore several hypotheses for why this occurred and ultimately conclude that the military and its allies did not understand electoral systems well enough to act strategically and that they overestimated their support relative to the NLD. This failure of authoritarian learning has important implications for understanding authoritarian politics, democratic transitions, and the challenges faced by authoritarian governments seeking to make such transitions.     

International Influences on Nonviolent and Violent Contention

ABSTRACT

How do international actors influence dissidents’ decisions whether to challenge their states using violent means, nonviolence, both or neither? We argue that the presence of important actors affects dissident decisions to engage in violent or nonviolent contention by affecting whether dissidents expect that governments will repress or concede to dissident demands in response to this contention. We examine the effect of two prominent types of actors – powerful states with close ties to the government and Highly Structured Inter-Governmental Organizations (HSIGOs) on dissident behavior in all national-level elections in Africa from 2000–2012. Using integrated data drawn from four leading conflict events datasets, we find that dissidents are less likely to engage in violent contention when their government receives higher levels of military aid from the United States and in former French colonies, and more likely to engage in both violent and nonviolent contention when their state is a member of a greater number of HSIGOs.     

Narcotics,Radicalism, and Armed Conflict in Central Asia: The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

While the academic debate on security has broadened in recent years, it has failed to cohesively include transnational organized crime and drug trafficking as a security issue. However, especially in weak states in developing and postcommunist regions, these phenomena are having an increasingly negative effect on security in the military, political, economic, and societal sense. Security issues in Central Asia are a prominentexample of the links between drug trafficking and military threats to security. This is illustrated most clearly by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has been both a major actor in the drug trade from Afghanistan to Central Asia as well as the most serious violent nonstate actor in the region. The link between the drug trade and armed conflict is of fundamental importance to understanding the challenges to Central Asian security.     

A Crude Bargain: Great Powers,Oil States,and Petro-Alignment

Abstract

Petro-alignment, a quid pro quo arrangement whereby great powers offer security in exchange for oil states’ friendly oil policies, is a widely used and yet undertheorized energy security strategy. One consequential aspect of this exchange is that great powers choose different levels of security commitment to keep oil producers friendly. With what criteria do great powers rank oil states? How do we conceptualize different types of petro-alignments? What exactly do great powers and oil producers exchange under each petro-alignment type? I posit that a mix of market power and geostrategic location determines the strategic value and vulnerability of individual client oil states, which then generates four corresponding types of petro-alignment—security guarantee, strategic alignment, strategic favor, and neglect. Two carefully selected case comparisons—Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1970–91, and Azerbaijan and Ecuador in 1990–2013—show how great powers created, utilized, and maintained petro-alignments under the unique logic of oil markets and across varying geopolitical settings. The findings have important implications on great powers’ grand strategies, strategic behaviors of oil states, and the role of oil in international security.     

The evolution of power,threat, and security: Past and potential developments

This paper describes the development of the international military situation over the past three decades and explores the potential for its transformation under different assumptions regarding economic conditions and the character of international relations. Using newly derived indices in the conventional military area, an assessment is made of the shifting tides in the power, threat and security situation that has confronted twenty‐five important states in the international system during the recent past. The past is then contrasted with some possible alternative developments. These developments are assayed using a global simulation model, GLOBUS, developed at the Science Center Berlin.     

From victorious rebels to strong authoritarian parties: prospects for post-war democratization

ABSTRACT

In a number of cases, rebel movements that won civil wars transformed into powerful authoritarian political parties that dominated post-war politics. Parties whose origins are as victorious insurgent groups have different legacies and hence different institutional structures and patterns of behaviour than those that originated in breakaway factions of ruling parties, labour unions, non-violent social movements, or identity groups. Unlike classic definitions of political parties, post-rebel parties are not created around the need to win elections but rather as military organizations focused on winning an armed struggle. Key attributes of victorious rebel movements, such as cohesive leadership, discipline, hierarchy, and patterns of military administration of liberated territory, shape post-insurgent political parties and help explain why post-insurgent parties are often strong and authoritarian. This article seeks to identify the mechanisms that link rebel victory in three East African countries (Uganda, Ethiopia, and Rwanda) to post-war authoritarian rule. These processes suggest that how a civil war ends changes the potential for post-war democratization.     

Democratic police reforms in war-torn societies

This article reviews the initial questions surrounding the design of police reforms in war-torn societies, by examining the ‘demobilisation dilemma’ and issues pertaining to force composition, which are key to the reinsertion of combatants and to the political legitimacy of new security arrangements. Police reform must be understood as more than a process of skills transfer from international donors to a ‘rookie’ national force. Many of the most serious challenges derive from weak judiciaries, high crime rates and embedded authoritarian cultures. These factors often spur governments to reintroduce military forces and to increase police powers and legal penalties, thereby jeopardising newly-won rights and risking a return to authoritarian policing. Studies indicate that police must be responsive and respectful and must win public cooperation if they are to be e?ective in ?ghting crime and maintaining public order. This requires a multi-sectoral strategy, encompassing a wide range of actors: from the military and civilian police in peacekeeping operations to donors that provide support for democratic institutional, economic and social development.     

东盟的经济安全观

20世纪80年代以来,由于国际政治经济环境的变迁,经济安全从原来的低级政治转变为高级政治。东盟传统的国家安全观强调综合安全,尤其将军事和政治安全置于最重要地位,随着地区传统安全威胁的消除,东盟国家将经济安全视为新时期的焦点。经济发展是东盟一些威权国家政治合法性的基础,因此经济安全是维护其政治安全的重要手段。为维护各国经济安全,东盟国家一方面采取经济自由化改革参与全球化进程以便提高自身经济竞争力,另一方面实行开放地区主义策略,既依靠本地区的集体力量增强经济实力,又充分利用地区外的市场和资源。     

Regime and Power in International Terror Crises: Strong Democracies Fight Back Hard

This study explores regime, power, and violence in international terror crises (ITCs). It examines terror strikes and retaliations against the terror groups and their hosts. The exploration tests two hypotheses: first, democracies, like other states, retaliate, even at the risk of escalation; and second, strong democracies fight back with massive violence as do authoritarian regimes. Historical narratives of ITCs from 1934 to 2006 show that strong democracies were the most common targets of terror. Like authoritarian states, they responded to terror, but were the most violent retaliators, followed by weaker states, democratic or not. So the democratic constraints affect weaker states more than stronger ones. These trends draw attention to the destabilizing nature of international terror and its challenge to the peaceful resolution of international disputes.     

Contextualising and theorising economic development,local business and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar

ABSTRACT

After Myanmar ended military rule in 2011, significant foreign investment arrived to facilitate a profitable transition to an integrated regional economy, and under the promise that foreign actors can help facilitate peaceful long-term development. However, these firms have also tacitly supported an ethnic cleansing committed by the government that most have partnered with or funded. This article builds theory on economic opening, development and conflict, using research from Myanmar to forward three arguments about business actions in fragile, at-risk countries. First, international-led regulatory reform has had little impact on endemic corruption at the micro- or meso-levels, as local elites and international businesses remain the primary beneficiaries. Second, ‘development’ is a contentious topic, defined locally not as broad societal growth but the unjustified picking of winners and losers in society by foreign entities. Third, business ventures are exacerbating ethnic tensions through a liberal peace-building mentality that is unresponsive to either local conflicts or local communities. The article closes by offering three ways that these findings open future research avenues on business engagement as peace-builders and development agents in developing yet fragile states.     

NATO and the Arctic: is the Atlantic alliance a cold war relic in a peaceful region now faced with non-military challenges?

Abstract

This article analyzes which role the Atlantic Alliance plays in the Arctic and whether it can contribute to the security and territorial integrity of its members in the region. In a dramatic change from the cold war era, the Arctic is no longer at the center of a conflict between two hostile superpowers. But what can a basically military organization such as NATO – though with proven political functions – contribute to stabilizing the Arctic region if its major challenges are non-military? With regional challenges resulting mostly from globalization and climate change, it is open to question whether a military alliance such as NATO has the will and the capability to cope with them. We might thus need to look also at individual members’ interests and abilities besides searching for joint alliance action. If we find NATO not up to the challenges, which alternative institutions offer themselves for coping with the political conflicts and controversies in the Polar region?     

Subverting autocracy: emancipative mass values in competitive authoritarian regimes

Competitive elections in authoritarian regimes are inherently ambiguous: do they extend regime persistence or, vice versa, operate as subversive events? This article tests Inglehart and Welzel's “emancipatory theory of democracy”, which has not been tested for competitive elections in autocracies: when emancipative values grow strong, autocratic power appears increasingly illegitimate in people's eyes, which motivates subversive mass actions against authoritarian rule. For electoral outcomes this suggestion implies, first, that authoritarian incumbents are more likely to suffer electoral defeat when emancipative values have become more widespread. Second, post-electoral protest against fraudulent elections is more likely when emancipative values have become more widespread. To test these hypotheses, we analyse 152 elections among 33 electoral authoritarian regimes over 21 years from 1990–2011. We find that emancipative values are indeed strongly conducive to incumbent defeat while their effect on post-electoral protest is conditional: it only occurs in elections won by the incumbent. These findings intertwine two separately developed literatures: one on authoritarian regime subversion and the other on emancipatory cultural change.     

Does Russia need a general staff?

The institutional arrangements and mechanisms for preventing and managing conflicts will determine the future of European security and the balance of power in a wider Europe. Russian policy and Russia‐NATO relations are anaylsed within the context of the ongoing changes at Russia's southern periphery. The embryos of three distinct security systems are developing ‐ a Russia‐led, a NATO‐led and one led by the international community. The article suggests that instability in the southern periphery in the future will require security cooperation and a joint approach by Russia and NATO countries.     

Why “Conservative,” Not Liberal,Internationalism?

There is no broad literature defining conservative internationalism as there is for liberal internationalism and realism. Yet conservative internationalism differs from liberal internationalism and realism in four important ways. First, it seeks a world of limited government or separate sovereign nations not big international institutions. Second, it believes that national security is a function of ideological differences not just relative power or diplomatic misunderstandings. The democratic peace is a much safer world for America than the balance of power or United Nations. Third, it recognizes the need to use force during negotiations, not just after negotiations fail, because authoritarian states will not take negotiations seriously if they can achieve their objectives outside negotiations. And fourth, it advances democracy conservatively by prioritizing regions where strong democracies exist nearby (today Ukraine and Korea) and by using military leverage to reach timely compromises that weaken authoritarian states.     

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 Taiwan's 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 military's 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 Taiwan's democracy.     

Gunning for security governance in a resource-rich African state? Interrogating militarisation in a democratic Nigeria

ABSTRACT

This article examines the socio-historical factors that underpin the political sociology of militarism in Nigeria. In spite of subscribing to a democratic constitution and several regional mechanisms that advance democratic values, security governance in Nigeria has been marked by the increasing use of military force in responding to perceived threats posed by armed militias in the oil-rich Niger Delta. I argue that the securitisation of oil is fuels militarisation, facilitated by local, national and international actors. The turn to democratisation and changing conceptions of security have reinforced rather than reined in militarism, which results in a competitive and often violent politics between national, local and global security and military actors over access to and control of oil resources. These dynamics also result in dangerous socio-economic and political consequences for Niger Delta communities.