This book, first published in 1981, is a comprehensive examination of the main theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches to the study of the military in modernising political systems, in socialist and non-socialist countries. It analyses civil-military relations in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and China, and in doing so sheds new light on the comparative politics and strategic affairs of the Cold War period.
This book represents the first attempt to deal with the problem of how to conceptualize the civil-military relations of communist systems within a common intellectual framework. The opening chapters present three major constructs originally designed for analyzing civil-military relations in the USSR: the interest group approach, the institutional congruence approach, and the participatory model. In subsequent chapters the utility of these approaches is tested against a wide variety of communist systems, including those of Cuba, the USSR, China, Romania, Hungary, the GDR, and Poland. In probing these issues for the first time, the authors shed considerable light on the transnational differences and similarities among communist systems, and the dynamics of civil-military relations in all communist systems.
This book, first published in 1981, is a comprehensive examination of the main theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches to the study of the military in modernising political systems, in socialist and non-socialist countries. It analyses civil-military relations in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and China, and in doing so sheds new light on the comparative politics and strategic affairs of the Cold War period.
From open civil war in Bosnia and Georgia to the Russian president’s use of military units against an uncooperative parliament, civil-military conflicts in the former USSR and Yugoslavia are increasingly attracting world-wide attention and concern. This volume brings together fourteen essays that explore the roles of the armed forces in the ongoing struggles for control over the processes of state formation and government in these newly independent countries. Twelve chapters focus on the experiences of particular countries in the region; and introductory and concluding chapters draw out commonalities and differences among the cases, comparing them with one another as well as with post-authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world.
The relationship between civil society and the armed forces is an essential part of any polity, democratic or otherwise, because a military force is after all a universal feature of social systems. Despite significant progress moving towards democracy among some African countries in the past decade, all too many African militaries have yet to accept core democratic principles regulating civilian authority over the military. This book explores the theory of civil-military relations and moves on to review the intrusion of the armed forces in African politics by looking first into the organization and role of the army in pre-colonial and colonial eras, before examining contemporary armies and their impact on society. Furthermore it revisits the various explanations of military takeovers in Africa and disentangles the notion of the military as the modernizing force. Whether as a revolutionary force, as a stabilizing force, or as a modernizing force, the military has often been perceived as the only organized and disciplined group with the necessary skills to uplift newly independent nations. The performance of Africa's military governments since independence, however, has soundly disproven this thesis. As such, this study conveys the necessity of new civil-military relations in Africa and calls not just for civilian control of the military but rather a democratic oversight of the security forces in Africa.
This book provides the first comprehensive study of the evolution of the Iraqi military from the British mandate era to post-Baathist Iraq. Ethnic and sectarian turmoil is endemic to Iraq, and its armed forces have been intertwined with its political affairs since their creation. This study illustrates how the relationship between the military and
First Published in 1984. In this volume, the reader will find seven papers which deal with a broad spectrum of issues not necessarily confined to civil-military relations in their more limited and narrow definition. One will also find reference to the broader issues of the social, economic and political impact of the protracted violent conflict on Israeli society. The volume focuses more on the consequence of the actual management of the war rather than on the decision-making process proper.
Examines the broad-ranging domestic roles of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, assessing its influence over Iran's political culture, economy, and society and its ability to shape the political future of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
A soldier-citizen describes the role of the Republic of China's military in the political socialization of Taiwan's citizens during the first two decades after the loss of the Chinese mainland.
