Guarding the Guardians

Civil-Military Relations and Democratic Governance in Africa

Mathurin C. Houngnikpo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317124290
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

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.

Chapter 1
Conceptual and Theoretical Issues

In order for the colonial powers to extract economic largesse from their newly acquired territory, they needed to install a repressive state apparatus. In this way, the colonial state was above all a military state. Colonisation was often imposed by force of arms, or through intimidation based on the threat of force. The colonial order established by conquest was typically a military order which coerced the colonised peoples into a state of submission.1

Despite democratic hopes and aspirations, Africa continues to face the praetorian problem, i.e., the need to curb the political power of the military establishment and to confront the challenge of transforming the armed forces into a professional body committed to providing for the external security of the country. Civil-military relations have been strained in most African countries, perpetuating a pattern of estrangement between the military and society. As the continent transitions slowly towards democratization, the state of civil-military relations is likely to dictate the pace of reform. It is therefore imperative to rethink civil-military relations in order to establish the adequate institutional framework conducive to effective interaction between society and its defense and security forces. While not a panacea, democracy, through its values such as transparency, accountability and participation, offers the best opportunity for realizing human security. While the meaning of democracy is a hotly contested subject, its merits are now widely accepted and many African countries have, since the early 1990s, embarked on democratic transitions. However, even as the democratic transition has encompassed many African countries, it is important to recognize that African countries are on different trajectories in their transitions.

Because Africa’s threat environment is constantly changing, the security needs of African societies evolve. While the long-term goals of achieving peace, stability, and economic prosperity across the continent are likely to remain relatively consistent, the methods for reaching them almost certainly will change to reflect Africa’s own evolving definition of what security means. Because human security should be a public good, democracy offers the best tool to address security concerns on the continent. Specifically, the openness of democratic systems allows both civilian and military leaderships to start closing the security divide between them. Despite its timid steps on the continent, democratization might lead to genuine democratic transitions and better days for Africa. This is at least the hope of many on the continent, and this book seeks to contribute to the new discourse on healthy civil-military relations. At the outset, let us introduce some basic concepts and explore theoretical issues required to grasp the thrust of the discussion.

Basic Concepts

The relationships among the military, political leadership and society at large, as old as humanity itself, remain filled with intrigue, evolving from the moment society had to depend on part of its population to fight external aggression to contemporary instances where nations choose to invade others for various perceived interests. Because a conceptual study of civil-military relations within a democracy provides methodological challenges arising from the very nature of such relationships and definition of some key concepts and theories, this first chapter sets the stage by embarking on both epistemological and theoretical groundings of the book.

Civil-Military Relations

The legacy of colonial armies set civil-military relations in independent Africa off such a bad start, spawning 25 coups d’état in the first decade of independence.2 By the twilight of Europe’s scramble for Africa, the military had gained ascendancy over civilian leaders in many indigenous governments. According to Hull “the great leaders of Africa were no longer men of peace and statesmanship, but of war.”3 A few years after independence, government in Africa changed hand from charismatic civilian leaders to the military. Having experienced the use of colonial armies for civil repression, tax collection and conquest functions, new leaders were perplexed about the role the military should play in the overdue development process. Overall, the rise of the African military is well captured in McGowan’s study. Between 1956 and 2001, there have been 80 successful coups d’état, 108 failed coup attempts and 139 reported coup plots in sub-Saharan Africa.4

In a broad sense, civil-military relations are about the interface between the security sector and the different segments of the society in which the security forces exist and operate. The relations focus especially on the processes, institutions and mechanisms by which the security sector is brought under constitutional civil authority. This includes how the security forces interface with other state institutions, civil society, the media, and social classes, as well ethnic and religious groups. Given Africa’s history with civil-military relations, it is this broader meaning of civil-military relations that has applicability to the continent, if security, democracy and development (social, economic and political) are to be realized. The civil-military relationship ranges from civilian supremacy over the security forces or vice-versa, to the mutual interfacing with each other for the benefit of a nation as a whole while simultaneously safeguarding the corporate interests of the military and those of civilians. Until the recent wave of democratization, most African countries fell somewhere between civilian supremacy and military domination.

A key factor in the state of civil-military relations in Africa has been the extent and nature of military’s involvement in national politics and governance. The rash of military coups during the 1960s through the 1980s rendered complex the rapport between the nation’s armed forces and its polity. This subverted civilian government and, in doing so, drove an even bigger wedge between the military and civilian populations and institutions. Whatever the reasons for the intervention, military involvement in politics generally has had the unfortunate effect of linking the military with the turmoil that many African countries have endured since independence. Not surprisingly, the military is associated with the political repression and endemic human rights abuses that characterized Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Confidence-building measures leading to a de-militarization of politics in Africa will have to be instituted to help repair this relationship and allow a genuine democratization.

Demilitarization and Democratization5

Similar to other political organizations in the state, the military participates in politics to protect its own corporate interests. This point is driven home by Uzoigwe when he contended and demonstrated (with cases) that “in no state, traditional or modern, is the military totally divorced from the political structure. The degree of integration, however, of the military and politics varies from state to state.”6 The military has, therefore, historically been a crucial political institution within the state—one that has never been totally divorced from politics as many people would like to believe. In essence, the military intervenes in the politics of all modern states—advanced industrial as well as non-industrial and developing.

Given the military’s involvement and influence in African politics, current literature on democratization on the continent deals mainly with de-militarization which implies the “disengagement” or “withdrawal” of the military from the political arena.7 For several decades, Africa has been dominated by militarization or militarism. Militarization is viewed as the armed build-up and engagement of society, through military coups, authoritarian regimes, war, armed conflicts, internal military intervention and the dominance of patriarchal powerful military and repressive state apparatuses; while militarism refers to the pervasiveness in society of symbols, values, and discourses validating military power.8 It is widely hoped that through de-militarization of African politics, the military will withdraw from politics. Consequently, these identified practices and norms associated with militarization and militarism would be vitiated and the polity and society would seek a civil balance.9

The problematic of this definition arises primarily from its simplistic casualty or symmetry between militarization/militarism and military rule.10 The point to emphasize is that the practice of militarization and militarism is not synonymous with only military rule (but present also in civil regimes) hence, the withdrawal of the military from the political arena does not abrogate these practices. More especially, post-military states usually have entrenched norms and practices of militarism which are not easily deconstructed or eradicated with the formal transfer of political power from the military to civilians.11 Consequently, the conceptualization of demilitarization must transcend the idea of the formal withdrawal of the military from the political arena. It must include the deconstruction of the ideological and institutional structures of militarism and authoritarian ethos, and the reassertion of civil control and democratic culture over the organs of the state, economy and civil society.12 Civil society usually gets acculturated with the symbols, language, values and norms of militarism under military rule, which require being addressed and deconstructed in a post-military era. Conceiving demilitarization in this broader sense facilitates a linkage with the concept of democratization.

In Adejumobi’s view, demilitarization and democratization are set in an organic linkage on two basic grounds. First, they share the same background and object. They both constitute attempts at the reconstruction of the political order from an autocratic, to a relatively more open political system. Second, they are in real senses, products of social and political struggles, meant to emancipate a people. The end result of both when properly concretized, should be the establishment of a democratic political order and society.13

The Military, Civil Society and Democratization in Africa

The post-Cold War demand for reconstituting the political order in accordance with the principles of freedom and justice spread to Africa where conditions of authoritarian rule had persisted despite civil society’s struggle to alter political dispensation on the continent. In many African countries, activists who had been detained in the past for their opposition to government gained more freedom to speak out. As political groups began to articulate their displeasure with dictatorial methods of rule, they quickly received popular support. It became clear that democracy or democratization—the process that leads to democracy—had gained a new momentum in Africa. Scholars’ understanding of democratization became more sophisticated, emphasizing the dynamic aspects of the process. Democratization is no longer regarded as a mechanical journey toward a predestined outcome, but rather a means to an end that can “enable the mass of citizens to exert control over those g...