One key step in the process of development is the transition from the personalistic rules and privileges that characterise developing societies to open access orders and rational–legal bureaucracies sustaining impersonal rules. This article uses a micro-data set of Spanish officers to study the politicisation of the army during the Second Republic (1931–1939) taking Franco's Africanist faction as the case study. The military reforms during 1931–1933 increased the impersonality of rules determining the promotion of officers, but executive discretionary powers persisted. The results suggest that changes in the government affected the dynamics of the army. Under conservative governments (1934–1935), Africanists were promoted more rapidly. Centre-left governments during the period of 1931–1933 did not systematically promote Africanists differently, but the revision of promotions in 1933 slowed their careers. The politicisation of the army was one of the factors contributing to the military coup that started the Spanish Civil War.
