to a democratic government that has failed to function effectively. Their
rational structures, capable of relating means to ends and associated with
rapid technological development and specialist skills, enable them to be
viewed as ‘possible saviours’ where there is ‘a sense of failure in the country’
(Pye, 1971, pp. 278–83). However, as Mazrui has argued, though the military
may be a modern organization in structural terms, in Africa, where soldiers
are frequently recruited from the rural and less Westernized areas:
the attitudes of the soldiers to the wider society is probably more deeply
conditioned by traditionalist sympathies than by the modern characteris-
tics of a particular profession ... the military as an organisation might in
part be a carrier of scientificity, while the soldiers remain carriers of more
primordial habits. (Mazrui, 1976, pp. 251–2)Consequently the military, in Africa at least, may play a traditionalizing
role.
The monopoly of modern weapons is clearly an organizational asset to
the military, providing it with a near-monopoly of physical force. If the
civilian regime lacks military support, but the idea of a military government
lacks legitimacy, then the deciding factor will be the deployment of coer-
cion. Communications too are vital in this kind of political intervention,
particularly in a large country with many administrative centres. The mili-
tary’s communications system enables them to strike at different centres of
government simultaneously and to co-ordinate their activities in the imme-
diate disorderly aftermath of the coup. Such organizational advantages off-
set the political weaknesses of the military such as its lack of legitimacy and
administrative expertise.
The professional culture of the military may be related to the intervention
in politics. Professionalism can mean that the code of conduct within the
military, into which recruits are trained and socialized, supports the
supremacy of the civilian government. The professional soldier’s duty is to
obey the directives of the properly constituted civil authorities (Rapaport,
1962, p. 75). Professionalism is made up from expertise, social responsibil-
ity and corporate loyalty. According to Huntington, the more professional in
this sense the military is, the more ‘politically sterile and neutral’ it will be
(Huntington, 1957, p. 84).
However, military professionalism in some cultures can mean something
quite different: that the army sees itself as having a duty to defend the state
against forces that would undermine its integrity, even though such forces
might be the civilian politicians (Finer, 1962, p. 25). Finer therefore ques-
tions Huntington’s association of professionalism with the principle of the
188 Understanding Third World Politics