Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-kw2vx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-03T18:24:18.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Guardianship Dilemma: Regime Security through and from the Armed Forces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2015

R. BLAKE MCMAHON  and
BRANISLAV L. SLANTCHEV
R. BLAKE MCMAHON*
Affiliation:
University of California–San Diego
BRANISLAV L. SLANTCHEV*
Affiliation:
University of California–San Diego
*
R. Blake McMahon is Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of California–San Diego, CA 92093-0521 (rmcmahon@ucsd.edu).
Branislav L. Slantchev is Professor, Department of Political Science, University of California–San Diego, CA 92093-0521 (slantchev@ucsd.edu).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Armed forces strong enough to protect the state also pose a threat to the state. We develop a model that distills this “Guardianship Dilemma” to its barest essentials, and show that the seemingly ironclad logic underlying our existing understanding of civil-military relations is flawed. Militaries contemplating disloyalty must worry about both successfully overthrowing the government and defeating the state’s opponent. This twin challenge induces loyalty as the state faces increasingly strong external threats, and can be managed effectively by rulers using a number of policy levers. Disloyalty can still occur when political and military elites hold divergent beliefs about the threat environment facing the state, since militaries will sometimes have less incentive to remain loyal than the ruler suspects. Consequently, it is not the need to respond to external threats that raises the risk of disloyalty—as conventional wisdom suggests—but rather uncertainty about the severity of these threats.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 109 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 297 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Acemoglu, Daron, Ticchi, Davide, and Vindigni, Andrea. 2008. “A Theory of Military Dictatorships.” NBER Working Paper Series, No. 13915.Google Scholar
al-Marashi, Ibrahim. 2002. “Iraq’s Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis.” Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal 6 (3): 1–13.Google Scholar
Arbatli, Cemal Eren, and Arbatli, Ekim. 2014. “External Threats and Political Survival: Can Dispute Involvement Deter Coup Attempts?” Conflict Management and Peace Science.Google Scholar
Bengio, Ofra. 1989. “Iraq.” In Middle East Contemporary Survey, 1987, Vol. XI, eds. Rabinovich, Itamar, Shaked, Haim, and Ayalon, Ami. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 423–59.Google Scholar
Bengio, Ofra. 1990. “Iraq.” In Middle East Contemporary Survey, 1988, Vol. XII, eds. Ayalon, Ami and Shaked, Haim. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 500–43.Google Scholar
Bennett, Richard M. 2001. “The Syrian Military: A Primer.” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin 3 (8).Google Scholar
Besley, Timothy, and Robinson, James A.. 2010. “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Civilian Control Over the Military.” Journal of the European Economic Association 8 (2-3): 655–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, Risa A. 1998. “Political-Military Relations and the Stability of Arab Regimes.” In Adelphi Paper 324. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, Risa A. 2008. Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desch, Michael C. 1999. Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Egorov, Georgy, and Sonin, Konstantin. 2011. “Dictators and their Viziers: Endogenizing the Loyalty-Competence Trade-Off.” Journal of the European Economic Association 9 (5): 903–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enloe, Cynthia H. 1975. “Ethnic Factors in the Evolution of the South African Military.” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 5 (4): 21–8.Google Scholar
Esteban, Joan, and Ray, Debraj. 2008. “On the Salience of Ethnic Conflict.” American Economic Review 98 (5): 2185–202.Google Scholar
Feaver, Peter. 1996. “The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control.” Armed Forces and Society 23 (2): 149–78.Google Scholar
Feaver, Peter. 1999. “Civil-Military Relations.” Annual Review of Political Science 2: 211–41.Google Scholar
Finer, S. E. 1988. The Man on Horseback. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Gaub, Florence. 2013. “The Libyan Armed Forces between Coup-proofing and Repression.” Journal of Strategic Studies 36 (2): 221–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goemans, Henk E., Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, and Chiozza, Giacomo. 2009. “Introducing Archigos: A Dataset of Political Leaders.” Journal of Peace Research 46 (2): 269–83.Google Scholar
Hiro, Dilip. 1991. The Longest War. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 1957. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Practice of Civil-Military Relations. Boston, MA: Belknap.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Eric, and Haklai, Oded. 2008. “Dominant Ethnicity: From Minority to Majority.” Nations and Nationalism 14 (4): 743–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Londregan, John, and Poole, Keith. 1990. “Poverty, the Coup Trap and the Seizure of Executive Power.” World Politics 42 (2): 151–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lutterbeck, Derek. 2013. “Arab Uprisings, Armed Forces, and Civil-Military Relations.” Armed Forces and Society 39 (1): 28–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luttwak, Edward. 1979. Coup D’etat, a Practical Handbook. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McMahon, R. Blake. 2014. “Circling the Wagons: Civil-Military Relations and International Disputes.” Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Peace Science Society, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Neff, Donald. 1994. “Israel-Syria: Conflict at the Jordan River, 1949–1967.” Journal of Palestine Studies 23 (4): 26–40.Google Scholar
Nossiter, Adam. 2012. “Leaders of Mali’s Military Coup Seem to Have Uncertain Grasp on Power.” The New York Times, March 24, A8.Google Scholar
Parasiliti, Andrew, and Antoon, Sinan. 2000. “Friends in Need, Foes to Heed: The Iraqi Military in Politics.” Middle East Policy 7 (4): 130–40.Google Scholar
Pelletiere, Stephen C., and Johnson, Douglas V.. 1991. Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War. Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pilster, Ulrich, and Boehmelt, Tobias. 2011. “Coup-Proofing and Military Effectiveness in Interstate Wars, 1965–1999.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 28 (4): 331–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pipes, Daniel. 1989. “The Alawi Capture of Power in Syria.” Middle Eastern Studies 25 (4): 429–50.Google Scholar
Piplani, Varun, and Talmadge, Caitlin. 2015. “When War Helps Civil—military Relations: Prolonged Interstate Conflict and the Reduced Risk of Coups.” Journal of Conflict Resolution.Google Scholar
Powell, Jonathan. 2012. “Determinants of the Attempting and Outcome of Coups d’Etat.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56 (6): 1017–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Jonathan M., and Thyne, Clayton L.. 2010. “Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2009: A New Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research 48 (2): 249–59.Google Scholar
Quinlivan, James T. 1999. “Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East.” International Security 24 (2): 131–65.Google Scholar
Roessler, Philip. 2011. “The Enemy Within: Personal Rule, Coups, and Civil War in Africa.” World Politics 63 (2): 300–46.Google Scholar
Slantchev, Branislav. 2003. “The Principle of Convergence in Wartime Negotiations.” American Political Science Review 97 (4): 621–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staniland, Paul. 2008. “Explaining Civil-Military Relations in Complex Political Environments: India and Pakistan in Comparative Perspective.” Security Studies 17 (2): 322–62.Google Scholar
Sutter, Daniel. 2000. “A Game-Theoretic Model of the Coup D’Etat.” Economics & Politics 12 (2): 205–23.Google Scholar
Svolik, Milan W. 2009. “Power Sharing and Leadership Dynamics in Authoritarian Regimes.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (2): 477–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svolik, Milan W. 2012. The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svolik, Milan W. 2013. “Contracting on Violence: The Moral Hazard in Authoritarian Repression and Military Intervention in Politics.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 57 (5): 765–94.Google Scholar
Talmadge, Caitlin. 2013. “The Puzzle of Personalist Performance: Iraqi Battlefield Effectiveness in the Iran-Iraq War.” Security Studies 22 (2): 180–221.Google Scholar
Thompson, Leonard. 2001. A History of South Africa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Woods, Kevin M., Murray, Williamson, Nathan, Elizabeth A., Sabara, Laila, and Venegas, Ana M.. 2011. Saddam’s Generals: Perspectives of the Iran-Iraq War. Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analysis.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Ekkart. 1983. Political Violence, Crises, and Revolutions. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall and Co. Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

McMahon and Slantchev supplementary material

Appendix

Download McMahon and Slantchev supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 955.1 KB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.