Crafting democratic control of the military in South Korea and the Philippines: the problem of military factions

This article explores how a military's organizational character (cohesion or lack thereof) shapes military officers' attitudes toward new civilian leadership in democratizing South Korea and the Philippines. It suggests that a factionalized military makes civilian control much more difficult and the route to democratic consolidation highly unstable and incomplete for three reasons. First, in the factionalized army, individual officers' allegiance is directed toward their factional leaders, not toward the military as a unified body and the civilian leadership. Second, factionalized military will create ‘monitoring’ and ‘sanctioning’ problems for civilians. Finally, competition among various factions in the military promotes officers' appetite for political domination. The structured-focused analysis of democratization in South Korea and the Philippines clearly sustains the theoretical arguments. The study implies that the institutionalization of civilian control of the military in democratizing nations depends on new leaders' ability/willingness to remove military factions and rebuild the armed forces into a cohesive organ.