INTRODUCTION
Military
interventions in politics are very common both in developing democratic or
totalitarian regimes. There are various theories about the causes of military
interventions; historical missionary, organizational format theory, custodian theory,
and socio economic development theory. This paper aims to answer the
question of “What theory is best to explain military intervention in Nigeria
and the reasons for the theory.
Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz
are considered the two premier authors on the theory of civil-military
relations. Other theories have developed
either to fill in perceived shortcomings of the original concepts of Huntington
and Janowitz or to provide alternatives to the original theories. Some of these alternative theories include
Peter Feaver’s agent theory, Rebecca Schiff’s concordance theory, and Eliot
Cohen’s theory of unequal dialogue.
Since Samuel Huntington and Morris
Janowitz first introduced their theories on civil-military relations, many
scholars have debated the issue. Over
the years, many alternative theories have been explored. A study of civil-military relations has been
conducted on almost every nation in the world, some more than once. This paper
talks about the Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz theories of while
military intervene in politics,
ABOUT HUNTINGTON AND JANOWITZ
Samuel
Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927 – December 24, 2008) was an
influential conservative political scientist from the United
States of America whose works covered multiple sub-fields of
political science. He gained wider prominence through his Clash of Civilizations
(1993, 1996) thesis of a post-Cold
War new world order.
Morris
Janowitz (October 22, 1919 – November 7, 1988) was an American sociologist and
professor who made major contributions to sociological theory, the study of prejudice,
urban issues, and patriotism. He was one of the founders of military sociology and made major
contributions, along with Samuel P. Huntington, to
the establishment of contemporary civil-military relations.
WHAT IS MILITARY
INTERVENTION
Military intervention according to Fawole
(1994) is defined as the conscious act of displacing and supplanting an
existing political order, a government, by soldiers with the objective either
of governing or influencing the political affairs of the country in particular
direction determined largely by the interventionists themselves. It is directed
at the political system of the state or its agents involving the threat or
actual use of force to accomplish certain predetermined objectives which may be
political, economic, social or even military.
Civil-Military Theory
According to Richard Kohn, the
requirements for civilian control in a democracy are the rule of law, a stable
method for succession, workable practices for electing officials, and a
government and governing process accepted as legitimate by elites and by the
population as a whole.[i] There are a number of theories established
about civil-military relations. These
theories include, but are not limited to, Samuel Huntington’s theory on
subjective versus objective civilian control, Peter Feaver’s agency theory,
Rebecca Schiff’s concordance theory, Eliot Cohen’s unequaled dialogue, and
Morris Janowitz’s theory of a citizen soldier-based constabulary force. Specifically this paper will focus on four
theorists of civil-military relations, Huntington, Janowitz, Cohen, and
Feaver. These theories move from the
idea of what civil-military relations should be to how civil-military relations
actually work. Ayam, (2004)
SAMUEL HUNTINGTON AND PROFESSIONALIZATION
Samuel Huntington’s pioneering scholarship,
The Soldier and the State, served to lay the foundation of civil-military
relations theory, determining that the best way to maintain military separation
from civilian governments was through an increase of professionalization.
Huntington’s theory sought to determine a proper relationship between the
military and civil government through the professionalization of the military.
Huntington believed that it was professionalization that was the most important
element of the civil-military relationship and regarded expertise,
responsibility, and corporate consciousness as indicators of this professional
nature. If the military were allowed to have a separate, autonomous sphere of
influence, Huntington believed that they would remain separate from the
civilian government’s power. Huntington supposed an inherent correlation
between professionalization and subordination, become increasingly informed and
professional about their sphere of power would decrease the likelihood that the
military would try to exercise control and influence through the means of the
civilian government. Ayam,(2004)
Founded on varying degrees of
military professionalism, Huntington then classified two varying styles of
civilian control over military power “objective control” and “subjective
control.” While Huntington makes it clear that “objective control” is
preferable to “subjective control” the parameters of each are fairly vague.
Huntington believes that “objective control” is best form of civilian control
because it is possible to “simultaneously maximize military subordination and
military fighting power; guarantee the protection of civilian society from
external enemies and from the military themselves.” By increasing the military’s autonomy,
“objective control” is the most effective form of civilian control because it
weakens the military politically without degrading its ability to defend
society because professionalizing the military will cause it to become
politically sterile. While this principle seems logical, clear mechanisms for
instituting this form of control are not detailed, Huntington simply relies on
an assumption that there is an inherent link between voluntary subordination
and professionalism.[ii]
With little parameters one can only assume that they way to achieve “objective
control” would be to carry out any policy which would further increase the
autonomy of the military bureaucracy, or professionalizing the institution
through the provision of advanced technologies and training mechanisms.
HUNTINGT ON VIEW ON
MILITARY INTERVENTION IN POLITICS
Huntington’s school of thought argues that military
interventions are likely to occur in states lacking institutionalized political
cultures, which also suffer economic hardship and social division. This school
of thought also known as ‘environmentalists’ argue that, the state’s
socio-political and economic environment is responsible for military take over.
In other words, coups occur in an unstable society especially the developing
countries.
This school postulates that socio-political environment
can lead to military intervention as the case of Algeria in 1992 where the
military intervened because it feared the outcome of multi-party elections
where an Islamic movement was poised to win and form the next government. The
military conscious of its personal interest opted to abort the democratic
process and take over power itself. (Huntington 1969).
Similarly, political institutions like political parties, pressure groups,
legislature and judiciary etc, are weak and therefore create the platform for
the military to intervene. Social divisions especially ethnic and class
conflicts in the continent has also led to military intervention in the last
two decades. For example, Countries such as: Algeria 1992, Burundi 1996,
Central African Republic 2003, the Gambia 1994, Mali 1991, Niger
1996-1999, Nigeria 1993, Lesotho 1991-93, Guinea Bissau 2003, Sao tome and
Principe1995, Sierra Leone 1992, 96, and 97 have all witnessed military
intervention.
From the above assertions one can say that, African regimes are
vulnerable to crisis because they tend towards personal rule rather than
legal-rational structures, consequently as soon as violence becomes the
defining mechanism of regime change in Africa, the military then becomes a key
player in politics. Huntington argued that, in a state lacking authority,
competing social groups employ means which reflect their peculiar nature and
capabilities, the wealthy bribe, student riot, workers strike, mobs
demonstrates and military intervention;
therefore, in the absence of strong institutions the military come into power.
The military is forced to intervene in the political process in the absence of
other social groups with the ability to govern effectively, (Huntington 1969).
HUNTINGTON
CUSTODIAN THEORY BEST EXPLAINS MILITARY
INTERVENTION IN NIGERIA POLITICS AND REASONS.
What accounts for
the difference in the incidence of coups across countries?” my findings
strongly support the Huntington theory as having the most significant impact on
the incidence of coups in Nigeria politics; Huntington theory state that the
military is the custodian of the nation constitution, and, so, as such, it fee.
Huntington asserted
that the military would usually be welling to return to the ballacks after a
dispute has been settling. Thus, the military only acts as the guardian to
check the activities of corrupt civilian administrators and to ensure political
stability. Huntington stressed that the military will intervene when civilian
government lacks legitimacy due to inadequate electoral and an ineffective
executive (Huntington 1969).
Thus, the praetorian army will tend to replace weak and unstable political
regimes. Finer (1969) argued that the most important cause of military
intervention is the low or minimal political culture of the society concerned.
According to Huntington and Finer, the interpretation of military coups relates
to the characteristics of the Nigerian army. Finer, more than Huntington
stressed the role that corruption plays in intervention; in Nigeria some
members of ineffective civilian leadership have been found to be corrupt and
inept and to pursue self seeking ambition. In contemporary society, however,
the military is no longer content with enjoying proxy leadership. With a corps
of relatively well-educated and highly-trained manpower and in the
context of the prevailing crisis in Nigerians development, the military
may see itself as the rightful heir to state power and as the legitimate
recipient of public resources, as Marx foresaw.
A guardian coup is where the military intervene in order to rescue the state
from civilian mismanagement” the men in uniform consider it their duty to
replace their incompetent civilian predecessors (Thomson, 2004:134). The
military men see themselves as the custodian of the state and its constitution
and this clearly is what has been obtained in Nigerian politics which led to
the first Military coup in Nigeria, where the military felt the civilian regime
was failing the nation and as an alternative and custodian they became involved
in Nigerian politics.
MORRIS JANOWITZ AND THE CONSTABULARY
FORCE
Morris Janowitz has reviewed the role
of changing international relationships on the relationship between the
military and civilian government. In his
work, The Professional Soldier, Janowitz looks toward the advent of nuclear
weapons and the necessity of the military to change its behavior in relation to
technological advances. During the Cold War, the two great powers the United
States and the Soviet Union applied security strategies of deterrence with
limited actual war. Janowitz states that the lines between peace and war had
been blurred in this new military concept, influencing the military to view
itself in a new ideal as a constabulary force. He states, “the military
establishment becomes a constabulary force when it is continuously prepared to
act, committed to the minimum use of force, and seeks viable international
relations, rather than victory.”[iii]
With this new concept, the military would look toward the image of a police
force for inspiration rather than of the warrior.
According to Dike, (2003) this new conceptualization has caused the military to
become inherently more politicized, necessitating a change to the nature of
civilian supremacy. As evidence of this phenomenon, Janowitz notes the
centralization of national security within the civilian government, “for
example, the creation of the Department of Defense and National Security
Council”[iv],
with an increased effort to gain access to civilian power. The National
Security Council and Department of Defense allowed the military to have more
spokes in the civilian government than ever before. These organizations allowed
the military bureaucracy to have greater proximity to the most powerful
decision-making institutions within the United States government, and
effectively increasing their presence in affairs of the White House. While this
proximity has not resulted in overarching military exercises of control as it
has in other military traditions, the U.S. military can effectively use this
influence to “act as a pressure group in the formulation of national security
policy” due to an inherent respect for professional specialist. Furthermore,
Janowitz notes, “as a pressure group the military is not voluntary association
acting on the organs of government; on the contrary, it is an organ of
government seeking to develop new techniques for intervening in domestic
politics.” Thus, changing
technologies and the changing role of the military has inherently politicized
the military establishment, explaining an increased intrusion of the military
into the affairs of the civilian government.
While Janowitz’s theory of
civil-military relations is institutional like Huntington’s, he comes no closer
to defining an alternative theory for how civilians can ensure their control on
the institutional level but states that the answer must be a greater amount of
civilian oversight in many different levels of military affairs.[v]
Janowitz advocates for civilian oversight of the military establishment in
order to develop standards for the military’s performance. However, maintains
that professionalization is the best means to establish civilian control. He
states that with this professionalization, the military would obey in one part
because of its “meaningful integration with civilian values” and also because
of Huntington’s notion of “self-imposed professional standards.”[vi]
Therefore, much of Janowitz’s prescribed solutions to this new problem of
civil-military control fall right back into the hands of Huntington’s original
concept of professionalism.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Political Development Theory has
Huntington (1976); Lieuwen (1962); Finer (1975) and Putnam (1967) as some of
the major proponents. The underlying argument here is that, where public
attachments to civilian institutions are strong and firm, military
interventions in politics and civilian governments will be weak. On the
contrary, where the public attachment to meaningful political activities and
ideologies are weak or non-existent, the military will find credible basis for
assuming power (Finer, 1975:21). The basic trust of the theory is that “the
propensity for military intervention in government decreases with increasing
popular attention to participation in partisan politics” (Putnam, 1967). The
net effect of these is weak governance and weak public administrative system,
culminating in a lack of development in Africa, especially in the countries
under review: Mauritania, Guinea, Niger and Mali.
THE RELEVANCE OF THE THEORIES TO
MILITARY INTERVENTION IN AFRICAN
Analysis
have shown that most civilian governments continue to fail to transit from one
democratically elected government to another as a result of the numerous
violent clashes which have become a major feature of the electoral processes of
the countries under review. We shall now closely consider special cases of poor
CMR (civil military relations) in the countries under review.
Mauritania
Mauritania’s
history following the end of one-party rule in 1978 was highlighted by five
successful coups out of twelve known incidences of coups: 1978, 1980, 1984,
2005, and 2008 (Appendix 1). While the coups of 1978 and 1984 installed
military regimes, the 2005 coup was motivated by increasing domestic tension
under the rule of Colonel Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya (Akinterinwa, 2008:20).
This tension stemmed partly from Ould Taya’s limited tolerance for
democratization. The coup leaders organized open elections, and a civilian
president was elected in 2007. Feelings within the military leadership which
indicated that the civilian regime was politically weak, especially in the face
of a perceived Islamist and jihadist threat, prompted the coup in August, 2008.
The leader of that coup, General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, had been a key
participant in the 2005 coup. In 2009, the junta organized Presidential
elections. Abdel Aziz ran as a civilian candidate and won. He remains in power
till today (Thurston, 2012:6). Here we see the socio-political theory of CMR
strongly at play.
Guinea
Out of fourteen recorded
instances of alleged coup plots in Guinea, three of the coups were
successful. The coup of 1984 took place at the demise of independence-era
leader, President Sekou Toure, and another in December 2008, at the demise of
President Lansana Conte, who came to power in the coup of 1984 (Appendix 1).
The junta installed in 2008 was led by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara. Camara
promised that elections would take place and that he would not stand, but
tensions rose as his promises came to appear hollow and his behaviour became
erratic. Consequently, in September 2009, soldiers brutally cracked
down on an opposition rally in the capital Conakry.
Then, in December 2009, one of Camara’s guards shot him in the head. The junta leader missed death by whiskers. He
was flown to Morocco and later to Burkina Faso. He was no longer permitted to
re-enter Guinea. Power passed to General Sekouba Konate, who oversaw a
two-round election in June/November 2010. The elections were marred by violence
and allegations of fraud. The winner, long-time opposition leader Alpha Conde,
is still the President (Marshall, 2004:4).
Niger
In the case
of Niger, out of eight recorded instances of coup
plots, four successful coup d’états were
recorded: the 1974 coup that overthrew independence-era President Hamani
Diori; a 1996 coup that installed Colonel Ibrahim Mainassara, after several
attempts at installing civilian governments; the 1999 assassination of
Mainassara by his bodyguards, who then organized civilian elections which was
won by President Mamadou Tandja; and the February 2010 coup that ousted Tandja
after he amended the constitution and remained in power beyond his original
two-term limit (Appendix 1). The 2010 coup led by Colonel Salou Djibo,
exemplified continuities with the 1999 coup. Djibo’s junta quickly organized
civilian elections. The two-round contest held in January/March 2011, was won
by opposition leader and current President Mahamadou Issoufou (Akinterinwa,
2008:20).
Mali
From the 16th
of January 2012, several insurgent groups fought against the Malian government for independence or greater autonomy
for Northern Mali, an area known as Azawad. ‘The National Movement for the
Liberation of Azawad’ (MNLA), an
organization fighting to make Azawad an independent homeland for the Tuaregs people, had taken control of the region by
2012. On the 22nd of March 2012, President Amadou Toumani
Touré was
ousted in a coup d'état over his handling of
the crisis in his country, a month before presidential
election took
place in the country.
Mutinous soldiers,
under the name ‘National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State' (CNRDR), led by
Captain Amadou Sanogo, the Chairman of the Committee took control
and suspended the constitution of
Mali (Associated
Press, 2012:8). In a television broadcast, the day after the coup was staged,
he announced that the junta had suspended Mali's constitution and taken control
of the nation. He also cited Touré's alleged poor handling of the insurgency
and the lack of equipment for the Malian Army, among other socio-economic
reasons, as justification for the overthrow of government. As a consequence of the instability following
the coup, Mali's three largest Northern cities: Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, were overrun by the rebels in three
consecutive days (Ahmed and Callimachi, 2012). On 5th April 2012,
after the capture of Douentza, the MNLA announced
that it had accomplished its goals and called off its offensive. The following
day, it proclaimed Azawad's independence from Mali (Al Arabiya, 2012).
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JANOWITZ AND
HUNTINGTON THEORY
Janowitz provides a
parallel theory to that of. Where
Huntington maintains that to keep the military professional it should remain
outside society, Janowitz believes that the military and society should be
integrated to ensure better civil-military relations Thomson, (2004).
This is a more subjective view of civil control, as described by
Huntington. Janowitz’s belief that the
blurring of lines between the military and the civilians runs counter to
Huntington’s belief that the military should remain separate and autonomous
from the civilians in order to maintain its professional integrity. Both theorists, however, agree that the
military must maintain its professionalism.
The difference is in how the professionalism is maintained, either
through continued separation of the military and civilians or through
integration. Janowitz’s constabulary
force would also negate the need for a distinction between wartime and
peacetime interactions.[vii] The officer in this constabulary force would
also have a greater understanding of the civilian government’s desires,
therefore diminishing the distinction between a working or shirking
attitude. Thomson (2004)
While these scholars have made
significant contributions to the field of civil-military relations, their
discoveries show difficulty in their application to civil-military traditions
around the world. Like Huntington, Janowitz has little prescription to the best
mechanisms, which would allow for increased civilian control and also fail to
determine the heart of the relationship between the two institutions on a more
regular basis. Although Janowitz takes account of the increasingly political
role adopted by the military as the result of changing world order, he
continues to rely on the dangerous assumption that subordination inherently
follows professionalization. While this
assumption has achieved relative application in the United States, its theory
definitely does not hold up in civil-military traditions around the world.
Historically, military coups have occurred even with the existence of
professional militaries. This makes it imperative to determine new mechanisms
for control and the nuances within the civil-military relationship.
RECCOMMENDATIONS
Recognizing civil-military relations
as one of the most important factors of democratic consolidation in the most
recent wave of democratization helps policymakers to identify necessary aspects
of focus in order to achieve their consolidation goals. Only by knowing the
largest obstacles for democratization will a country be able to determine which
reforms it needs to focus on implementing and warning signs for weak
governmental policies, etc. This paper has identified three possible
explanations for non-intervention: constitutional separation, punishment and
national identity. These explanations offer three different areas that
consolidating countries may look toward in their decisions about what
constitutional reforms are necessary. While all three variables may not apply
to another country’s civil-military relationship, it is likely that at least
one explanation can lend valuable insights into factors for civil military
separation
CONCLUSION
A military is an
organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually
including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or
perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its
greater society, such as advancing a political agenda and the military
intervene in politics because its sees itself as the custodian of the
constitution.
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