dictatorship. If it is fragmented, the military may deny political power to
newly emerging factions of the bourgeoisie. Repression of the workers may
reduce the profits derived from mass consumption and disrupt production.
The state under the military may encroach upon the private sector. The intel-
lectual element of the bourgeoisie may have a different ideological position
from that of a military dictatorship. Bourgeois politicians resent being
ousted from power, and foreign aid and investment may be dependent on
showing a democratic face to the world (Therborn, 1979, pp. 106–9).
Military intervention is further related to class by providing opportunities
for military embourgeoisement or upward social mobility on the part of the
armed forces themselves. Take, for example, the 1971 coupin Uganda. One
interpretation was that the coupreflected the interests of the army as a
marginalized group subordinate to a post-independence élite based on
Westernized educational attainment and the use of English as a lingua
franca. This excluded the armed forces from élite status because army per-
sonnel operated in the vernacular Swahili. The couptherefore provided an
opportunity for social mobility for an uneducated lumpen militariat. Thus,
without altering the class basis of political power, the coupproduced
a realignment of ruling groups and an opportunity for upward mobility for
groups not prominent under the previous civilian regime because they were
drawn from underprivileged sections of society or regions of the country
that had not been a major source of political recruitment for leadership posi-
tions. Other examples from Africa would include the ‘middle belt’ tribes of
Nigeria, and the northerners of Togo. Political power for a minority group,
especially one with an ethnic identity, has often ‘flowed from the barrel of
a gun’ (First, 1972, p. 435; Lloyd, 1973, pp. 167–8).
Embourgeoisement may take an even more literal form when the senior
ranks of the military use their political power after a successful coupto
enrich themselves with wealth and property. Members of the armed forces
can rise from petty-bourgeois status, with social origins among rich peas-
ants, technocrats, intellectuals, state bureaucracy, industrial management
and small-scale private capitalists, into the new bourgeoisie through the
accumulation of wealth from commissions, corruption, land acquisition and
speculation, trade and rents (Woddis, 1977, p. 87).
Economic development and military intervention
An economic explanation of military intervention argues that it is encour-
aged by a lack of economic development. When civilian governments are
Military Intervention in Politics 183