overruled, is relatively rare. More commonly a supreme military
council or similar body may effectively replace the legislature whilst
the day-to-day government may remain in the hands of a cabinet
with civilian participants. Top civil servants may often be deputed to
take over roles previously carried out by civilian politicians.
The longer the military participate in government, the more
functions may be taken over by the armed forces. It is not unknown,
even in civilian regimes, to deploy the army corps of engineers on
major construction projects, or to use the military to keep order in
cases of civil disturbance. This sort of expansion of the armed forces’
role may well gather pace. The demands of individual greed and
factional balance may well also lead to all sorts of government
patronage posts – from nationalised industry chairmen to university
chancellorships – going to military personnel.Civil autocracy
Like their military equivalents, few contemporary civilian dictators
(autocrats) reject the idea of democracy; most claim either to be
democratic rulers or to be preparing the way for democracy when the
mess created by the previous corrupt and ineffective regime has been
cleared up. Finer (1970) uses the suggestive descriptions of Façade
Democracies and Quasi-Democracies for regimes of this sort. As we
shall see in more detail later (Chapter 7, p. 173) meaningful free
elections are quite difficult to achieve so that deliberate manipulation
of an ostensibly democratic system may help to confuse domestic
opposition and satisfy Western aid donors, diplomatic and military
allies, or investors.
A variety of devices may be used to restrict the impact of elections
and opposition criticism. The most obvious devices are to postpone
continually the next elections having once attained a sort of electoral
victory; to ban some opposition parties as ‘subversive’, ‘terrorists’,
‘communists’ or ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ and to imprison their
leading supporters; or to ban all other parties as disruptive to
national unity. Slightly less obvious devices include the deployment
of patronage in favour of supporters and discrimination against
opponents in relation to employment by the state, public contracts
and the siting of major public works. Licences and subsidies may be
awarded to supporters in the media. Opponents may be prosecuted,148 STATES