The organization of the military and the circumstances in those countries
were not such that it need be feared that the military would perform any other
role than that of professional servants of the state. Yet no sooner had the com-
placency been expressed than events were to prove such optimistic predic-
tions false. In one African state after another civilian government succumbed
to the military, and in other parts of the Third World military support became
a necessary condition of regime survival even if the military did not take over
complete and direct power.
The question as to why the military became the political force that it did
in so many newly independent African and Latin American countries and
remained a dominant force in Latin America, despite longer histories of
independence and higher levels of economic development, is of more
than just academic interest. With fragile democracies being created in all
regions of the Third World, sometimes following prolonged periods of
military rule, it becomes of paramount importance to understand the
conditions which relate to military intervention and therefore threaten the
consolidation of democracy. Attention has focused in particular on the coup
d’étatand how, often with apparent ease (First, 1972, pp. 4–6), the
military is able to supplant civilian regimes. This is the problem with which
this chapter is concerned in order to establish when a threat to a new
democracy might emerge and what conditions are necessary to increase the
likelihood that the armed forces will remain loyal to civilian political
leadership and amenable to its direction. It does not deal with what kind of
government the military is capable of providing a Third World country
with, once it has taken control by force (an important theoretical frame-
work for the analysis of this question is to be found in Clapham and
Philip, 1985).
No single explanation has achieved total acceptance, as might be
expected with such a complex phenomenon occurring in such widely dif-
fering societies (Dowse, 1969, p. 217). Many of the explanations produced
of military intervention have dwelt more on why the preceding civilian
regimes were so fragile and unstable, almost taking it for granted that if a
civilian regime collapses in less developed societies the military will
inevitably be the successor. In the context of underdevelopment this is not
an altogether unwarranted assumption. In some circumstances of political
instability the military has represented ‘the only effectively organised ele-
ment capable of competing for political power and formulating public pol-
icy’ (Pye, 1966, p. 283; see also O’Kane, 1981). Other explanations,
however, have looked at the political advantages which the military enjoy
under such conditions.
174 Understanding Third World Politics