Introduction
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Notes Introduction 1. Given its close cultural and political ties to the Soviet Union and its Central Asian successor states, we have excluded Mongolia from our constellation of East Asian cases. 2. In the late 2000s, Freedom House had the Philippines and Bangladesh taken off its list of electoral democracies because of the deteriorating political and civil rights situation. The most recent ‘Freedom in World’ report (Freedom House, 2011a), however, classifies them as democracies again. 3. The classification of Sri Lanka and Nepal as authoritarian regimes is controver- sial. In its latest report, Freedom House (Freedom House, 2011a) categorizes both political systems as belonging to the group of non-electoral systems, whereas the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (Bertelsmann Foundation, 2012c) classi- fies them as ‘highly defective democracies’. According to the Polity IV score, both political systems are considered ‘anocracies’. 4. Civil–military relations in North Korea and Brunei, however, exhibit some impor- tant, unique elements. In North Korea, the Korean People’s Army has traditionally been the ‘revolutionary armed forces of the Korean Workers’ Party’ (KWP con- stitution of 1980, Chapter 7, Art. 46). However, since the introduction of the ‘military-first policy’ in 1995, party control over the Korean People’s Army (KPA) has eroded, especially in defense policy-making and the military’s internal affairs, and the military has become the main political actor within the country, even though most observers agree that prior to his death, Kim Jong Il had been in com- mand of the KPA (Gause, 2006; Kim, 2006: 72). At the moment of writing, an evaluation of Kim Jong Un’s degree of control over the KPA is not yet possible. The Royal Brunei Armed Forces have close relationships with the British Army and the Singapore Armed Forces; after independence in 1984, some British officers were entrusted with intelligence operations as well, and there is a British military base and a Singaporean training center in the country. 5. The Royal Army of Nepal was renamed Nepalese Armed Forces after the transition from a monarchy to a republic in 2006. 6. The differentiation between military and civilians is analytical. Empirically, it is sometimes difficult to delineate the boundaries of each category – even in estab- lished democracies. In Israel, for example, the practice known as ‘parachuting’, in which former military leaders join the top echelons of political parties and cab- inets, is still prevalent (Etzioni-Halevy, 1996). Other examples of an apparently blurred civil–military divide are South Korea and Indonesia, where retired generals became president after the transition to democracy. However, neither the Korean president Roh Tae-woo (1988–93) nor the Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (since 2004) achieved office by means of military appointment, black- mail, or use of force, but were elected in competitive elections. We thank Hans Born (personal communication) for raising this issue. 215 216 Notes 7. The terms ‘military’ and ‘armed forces’ are used interchangeably throughout this book. 8. The ‘security sector governance’ literature focuses on the way the security sec- tor is governed at the sub-national, national, and international levels. It reflects a comprehensive notion of security, embracing both military and non-military dimensions and encompassing both state and human security (Lambert, 2009: 201–202). In this vein, Heiner Hänggi (2004) presented the concept of ‘democratic governance of the security sector’ as an ideal-type model of security sector gover- nance. The normative ideal of ‘democratic security sector governance’ includes not only the effective control of the military by democratically elected civilian author- ities but also, among other things, parliamentary oversight, transparent decision making, civil society participation, effectiveness and efficiency in defense policy- making, ensuring that military training is in line with the norms and values of democratic societies, and providing human security. The idea of ‘security sector reform’ conceptualizes the process of achieving this normative ideal (Beeson & Bellamy, 2008: 24; Lambert, 2009: 106, 324). 9. Nevertheless, in order for civilians to be able to successfully implement specific strategies of control over the military, they must have sufficient resources. There- fore, actors will have to take into consideration the environment in which their strategy is to be realized, as the actual choice and its outcome depend on the resources at the actor’s disposal. Civilian politicians can develop different strate- gies for taming the military within a given context, with each strategy requiring different resources for its implementation. Contexts themselves are ‘strategically selective’, meaning that, given a specific context, only certain courses of strategic action are likely to see actors realizing their intentions (Hay, 2002: 127). 1 Conceptualizing Civilian Control of the Military 1. Authors’ calculation based on data from Axel Hadenius and Jan Teorell (2006), Appendix B. 2. Israel offers an example of a liberal democracy with military leaders closely involved in government policy formation within the normative framework of generally accepted civilian control (Kamrava, 2000: 75). 3. The distinction between ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ draws on Cottey, Edmunds, and Forster (2002), though we use their terminology in a slightly different way. 4. In Brazil, for example, the military retained both direct and indirect influence even after it had returned to the barracks in 1985, with six active-duty military officers in the cabinet of the new democratic government of President Sarney (Hagopian & Mainwaring, 1987: 488). The military even retained three cabinet posts in the first cabinet of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002). Yet despite these legacies of military rule, most political scientists have generally considered Brazil a democracy since the transition in 1985, albeit a ‘protected’ (Loveman, 1994) or ‘defective’ one (Merkel, 2004: 51). 2 Explaining Civilian Control of the Military in New Democracies 1. Bruneau (2012) summarizes Huntington’s critics into four essential points: (1) the tautological nature of Huntington’s argument about the relationship of profes- sionalism and control; (2) the use of selective data and disparate factual evidence; Notes 217 (3) the failure of Huntington’s approach to provide either empirically valid theo- retical explanations or practical guidance for the reform of civil–military relations in democratic and democratizing countries. As the fourth major shortcoming of Huntington’s work, Bruneau notes the ‘exclusive focus on civilian control of the armed forces’. Not surprisingly, we respectfully disagree with Bruneau. In our opinion, civilian control is the substantive core problem for civil–military relations in new democracies. 2. For an excellent definition and general discussion of the ‘structure and agency’ problem in the social sciences, see Dessler (1989). 3. Institutions, in our understanding, are ‘humanly devised constraints that struc- ture political, economic and social interaction’ (North, 1991: 97). This definition is widely compatible with all of the more narrow understandings in the literature belonging to ‘New Institutionalism’ (Hall & Taylor, 1996). 4. This argument is supported by the oft-recognized ‘attention deficit’ of civil- ians in regard to national defense and military policy in Latin America and the civilian neglect of security policy in some political transformations in post- communist Europe (see Cottey et al., 2002; see also Pion-Berlin, 2005; Pion-Berlin & Trinkunas, 2007). 5. Causal mechanisms are those ‘physical, social, or psychological processes through which causal capacities operate, but only in specific contexts or conditions, to transfer energy, information, or matter to other entities’ (George & Bennett, 2004: 137; see also Hedström & Ylikoski, 2010). 6. Justifying a political role for the military will be difficult after the transition to democracy. Even though military legitimacy is not necessarily low by definition and poor performance by civilian governments can erode mass support for civil- ian rule (Finer, 1962; Huntington, 1968), the transition from authoritarianism to democracy shifts the principle of rule by coercion to the principle of rule by con- sent. For the military, it is difficult to reconcile democratic legitimacy with its own claims to political influence. Similarly, compensation should play a small role in the entrenchment of the institutional status quo. Given its superior coercive abil- ity to stall change, there is no need for the military to compensate civilians to prevent them from challenging existing prerogatives. Furthermore, retaining the material or ideational resources that derive from its institutional privileges is often the primary reason for resisting institutional change in the first place. 7. See Perlmutter and LeoGrande (1982), Stepan (1988), Agüero (1995a), Brömmelhörster and Paes (2003), Heper and Güney (2004) and the brief descrip- tion of civil–military relations in Asian countries in the introduction. 8. This, for example, was the case in Chile, where the conservatives had benefited from the military regime’s neoliberal economic policies, making it easier for the military to limit the scope and speed of the transition in the face of civilians split by dissent (Thiery, 2000). 9. In fact, critical junctures are neither necessary nor sufficient for explaining