When Is Power-Sharing Not Enough? Military Inclusion and Coup-Conflict Link
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When Is Power-Sharing Not Enough? Military Inclusion and Coup-Conflict Link By Anastasiia Soboleva Submitted to Central European University Department of Political Science In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Political Science Supervisor: Professor Matthijs Bogaards Vienna, Austria CEU eTD Collection (2021) Abstract: The thesis addresses conflict-promoting military defection through the link between coup d'état and civil conflict. As the Arab Spring shows, disobedience by the ruler’s ethnic rivals hitherto included in the army is puzzling because they should have enjoyed their intra-regime strategic position. This research develops a framework of power-sharing between the incumbent and non-dominant factions in fractionalized, potentially unstable societies by adapting Svolik’s (2012) model. As argued, defection becomes preferable when credibility of a coup threat is diminished – i.e., when the ruler reneges via enhancing own praetorian forces, which is coupled by the faction’s low initial capabilities and present social unrest offering a moment for defection. Illustration of the model on Syria reveals that a decent place of Sunni officers and concurrent strength of security forces produced lasting co-habitation under Hafez al-Assad, accompanied by a lacking opportunity for defection. Thirty years later, however, the Arab Uprising gave Sunnis a good chance to abandon Bashar al-Assad, which had been preceded by disempowerment and parallel enhancement of elite units. Quantitative analysis on Roessler’s (2011) data supports the role of the praetorian build-up in inducing defection and rebellion, such that reneging features greater explanatory power than the extent of inclusion alone. Whereas unrest and the parameters’ interrelation are not evidenced statistically, it might indicate limited applicability of the framework or equally the need for a more case-oriented approach. Greater attention is therefore required to the ruler’s interaction with opponents who can prefer insurgency once capabilities turn insufficient for a credible coup threat. CEU eTD Collection ii Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 1. Constructing the framework ................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Coup-conflict link and Power-sharing .............................................................................. 4 1.2 Military inclusion ............................................................................................................. 6 1.3 Coup-proofing .................................................................................................................. 7 1.4 Reneging: Security forces build-up ................................................................................ 10 1.5 Defection and Background social mobilization .............................................................. 11 2. Formal modelling ................................................................................................................. 14 2.1 Game description ............................................................................................................ 14 2.2 Equilibrium and Hypotheses .......................................................................................... 16 3. Qualitative analysis .............................................................................................................. 18 3.1 Methodology ................................................................................................................... 18 3.2 Illustrative case study of Syria ........................................................................................ 19 3.2.1 Military and Sunni under Hafez al-Assad ( ) ................................................... 20 3.2.2 Elite units ( ) and Instability of the late 1970s ( ) .................................................. 21 3.2.3 Disempowerment under Bashar al-Assad ( ) ................................................... 25 3.2.4 Elite units ( ) and the Arab Spring ( ) .................................................................... 26 4. Quantitative analysis ............................................................................................................ 30 4.1 Methodology ................................................................................................................... 30 4.1.1 Parameters operationalization .................................................................................. 30 4.1.2 Control variables ...................................................................................................... 32 4.2 Results ............................................................................................................................ 33 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 41 Appendix 1: Formal modelling ................................................................................................ 46 1.1 Payoffs calculation ......................................................................................................... 46 1.2 Game solution ................................................................................................................. 47 CEU eTD Collection Appendix 2: Quantitative analysis ........................................................................................... 49 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 55 iii Introduction In the early 2010s, a number of Arab countries witnessed how its military personnel preferred to abandon the incumbent in the face of mass mobilization. The decision to defect during the Arab Upheaval became crucial for the ultimate removal of long-standing leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen [Barany 2011; Bellin 2012; Lutterbeck 2013]. Yet in some cases, military defection also precipitated full-blown civil conflict. In Syria, Libya, and Yemen – the countries that experienced such a scourge – the division of armed forces ultimately led to anti-government insurgency. Though defection was of varying degrees and within different ranks, disobedient behaviour in all the three states markedly featured group (tribal or sectarian) affiliation distinct from that of the incumbent [Ibid.].1 An especially illustrative case in this respect is Syria, where defection of Sunni mid- and low- ranking officers from the Alawite regime eventually induced the formation of the Free Syrian Army, a loose network of militias, in July 2011 [Albrecht, Ohl 2016: 47]. While pointing to the presence of post-defection rebellion, the countries actually help to enlighten an interesting route – that civil conflict and military coup, both headed by the faction non-affiliated with the ruler, are closely interweaved. Drawing on the notion of power-sharing in fractionalized societies, the thesis presents a broader framework for the link between civil war and overthrow by rival groups included in the army,2 which occurs against the backdrop of feasible full-fledged instability. CEU eTD Collection On a par with civil war, coup threat posed by soldiers embodies another conspicuous repertoire of political violence [Kalyvas 2019]. Problematized as a lack of civilian control 1 Though, the Yemeni case may be not a perfect example because one of the first top-brass defectors was General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, hailing from the same tribe as President Saleh [Barany 2011:30; Albrecht, Ohl 2016:46]. 2 The “army” is used as an equivalent to “military” and “armed forces”. 1 over the army and its resulting interference in politics [Feaver 1999], civil-military relations have focused on different tools aimed at deterring subversion – i.e. coup-proofing [Quinlivan 1999: 133]. More recently, scholars have also addressed the pernicious effect of coup aversion on civil strife. It is thus found to enfeeble peace not only through reduced effectiveness in combating insurgents [Gaub 2013; Rwengabo 2013], but crucially, through conflict promotion as such due to an exclusionary policy within the state apparatus. In this latter perspective, Roessler (2011, 2016) ruminates upon the dilemma permeating ethnically divided, weak states, such as in sub-Saharan Africa. Those countries are caught in a coup-civil war trap: a dominant group either shares power with rival factions – admitting them to coercive resources and unwillingly enhancing their coup capabilities – or excludes them from participation, relying on co-ethnics but thereby augmenting civil war risk [Roessler 2016: 5-6]. However, sometimes representatives of non-ruling groups in the army prefer to rebel, even though they factually partake in power-sharing. These factions embark on a riskier path of defection and full-scale violence, whereas in theory they should enjoy access to state resources through which they can threaten a leader with an ouster [Geddes 2009; Svolik 2013]. The extreme examples of this pattern are exactly the Arab Spring’s Syria, Libya and Yemen, where rival groups, though then represented in the army, abandoned the regime in order to challenge it from outside through insurgency. Such a puzzle prompts us to elaborate a wider framework for military inclusion and coup-conflict link in weak fractionalized societies