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Week Four Notes: Civil-Military Relations
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Reading Notes
Reading One: Civil-Military Relations in Africa
SOURCE: Browne Onuoha, “Civil-Military Relations in Africa” In Ojo, Samuel and Falola, Oloruntoba
(eds) Palgrave Handbook of African Politics, Governance and Development (London: Macmillan, 2018)
Chapter 16, pages 277-286.
SUMMARY: 10 pages to ~ 5 pages.
Introduction
The role the military played in African government and politics from the 1960s to the end of the 1990s
underscores the importance of the study of civil–military relations in the region, especially as they
shaped the process of nation-building and politics in Africa.
- What has been the nature of civil–military relations in Africa, and in what ways might they have
affected African government and politics.
- What is the nature of civil–military relations in Africa?
- To what extent does Huntington’s “subjective”/“objective” dichotomy of civil–military relations
explain civil–military relations in Africa?
Civil–Military Relations
● Civil–military relations: is an area of study that examines the relationship between civil society
and military organization
○ relationship between the civil authority and the military authority of the state.
● Huntington: “The principal focus of civil–military relations is the relation of the officer corps to
the state. Here the conflict between functional and societal pressures comes to a head. The officer
corps is the active directing element of the military structure and is responsible for military
security of society.”
○ The officer corps → who are they?
○ The state → what is the nature of the state, the African state?
○ What is the form of the society → African society, that socialized the individual citizen
before he was admitted into the military school and became a military officer?
■ Society = prospective military officer
● Ideology * Huntinting isolated but is important
● The chapter argues that an understanding of civil–military relations in Africa should rest more on
“society,” “state” and “ideology” than on officer corps.
○ Society being the most critical
○ Weak states are a distant second
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Theorizing Military Intervention and Civil–Military Relations in Africa
● Huntington: emphasized the need for institutionalized political culture to discourage military
intervention in politics and advocated for a professional military in order to ensure civilian
control.
○ Objective civilian control: acknowledges military professionalism and discourages
military participation in politics; military autonomy must not be subjected to any group or
class or institution of the state
○ Subjective civilian control: is the situation where the military is under the control of one
institution or another, one arm of government or another, one ethnic group or another, or
an authoritarian leader
○ Ideology → is an issue in this area, in particular to the extent that ideology may be
compatible with or hostile to the military ethic
■ liberalism, fascism, Marxism and Conservatism
● Huntington, Janowitz, Finer, and Welch and Smith have developed models that help understand
civo;-military relations also in Africa however actually how explanatory are these models in
understanding contemporary civil–military relations in sub-Saharan Africa?
● The author argues that the first place to begin when examining civil–military relations in Africa is
understanding African society, and also understanding citizens’ socialization process and the
socialization content (ideology).
○ Therefore society first then state that reproduces civil-military relations and not officer
corps.
○ But in the particular case of socialization, the state in Africa is weak and poorly
organized. This leaves society as the first-line agent to form the individual citizen before
the state enlists that citizen into military school.
The African Military Society and State in sub-Saharan Africa
● The 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s were known as the “age of generals”, a period during which
virtually all sub-Saharan African states were under military rule.
○ Age bracket of youth “the lost generation” → no meaningful development in their lives
■ Poverty, decay, especially during the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s
○ The state would be confronted by disenchanted, disappointed and disillusioned
citizens, some of whom would attempt to join the military.
■ The loyalty of such disillusioned citizens could be compromised and suspect,
particularly in the weaker states of sub-Saharan Africa.
■ The misrule by the military when they were in control of most of the
governments brought wars and conflicts, and gruesome social consequences
especially for African youth.
■ Even after the democratic transition of the 1990s, the youth that grew up during
military rule were not socialized to recognizing military loyalty to civilian rule
● No program to demilitarized the people, state or society or civilianized
the military after 30+ years of controlling political power.
