GIGA Focus Global
Number 6 | 2020 | ISSN: 1862-3581
Recent years have seen the expansion of the military’s visibility and social role in many democracies. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, democracies across the world had been deploying their militaries in an expanding range of operations. This has raised concerns about a return of the military as a political actor and the militarisation of democratic politics.
Worries about the military becoming the “gravedigger of democracy” have resurfaced once again in recent years. Military coups in Africa, the expansion of military roles in law enforcement in Latin America, and an intensification of geostrategic conflicts in Asia have raised concerns about the militarisation of politics and its dangers for democratic processes, political rights, and civil liberties.
However, across the world’s democracies, there are few signs of a coherent trend towards the “material” militarisation of politics. Military coups and other forms of undue military influence on government formation are the exception in democratic countries, and the relative resource endowment of the military has actually declined over the last three decades.
Nonetheless, there has been a worrying trend of democracies deploying their militaries for an increasing range of non-traditional missions in response to external or domestic security threats, including anti-terrorism activities, crime fighting, and the maintenance of law and order.
To legitimate these non-traditional missions, democratic governments have engaged in a militarisation of the security discourse which portrays the use of military force as justified and “normal.” Over the medium to long term, these militarised discourses may lead to material militarisation and the erosion of civilian control and democratic quality.
Democracies deploy their militaries in a range of operations, which are often accompanied by a militarised security discourse to legitimise the use of military force as a socially acceptable or “normal” tool of civilian politics. Over time, these militarised discourses may lead to material militarisation and the erosion of civilian control and democratic quality. External actors should, therefore, focus not only on reining in military coups and other forms of undue military influence on democratic politics, but also support the demilitarisation of security discourses in recipient countries.
As a reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic many countries in the world have deployed military forces to support ailing civilian administrative agencies and enforce curfews. This has not been confined to autocratic regimes in poor countries of the Global South with a long history of military involvement in politics, but has also taken place in many rich democracies of “the West” with uncontested civilian control over the armed forces. Nonetheless, in combination with a resurgence of military coups in Africa, an expansion of military roles in law enforcement in Latin America, and an intensification of geostrategic conflicts in Asia, there is concern about the military becoming a “gravedigger of democracy” that threatens democratic processes, curtails political rights, and undermines civil liberties (Kuehn 2019). This echoes a broader debate, expertly reviewed in a series of recent GIGA Focus publications, about whether we are witnessing a return of the military to the political scene after three decades of political dormancy.
In this GIGA Focus Global, we consider the evidence for a global trend toward the (re-)militarisation of politics in democracies. We argue that militarisation has two dimensions, one material and the other discursive. Material militarisation refers to the increase in power resources under the military’s control; discursive militarisation refers to the legitimation of the use of the military force as a socially acceptable or “normal” tool of civilian politics. While we do not find evidence of an overall material militarisation, we do see a trend towards the militarisation of political discourses in some of the world’s democracies. These militarised discourses may lead to material militarisation and the erosion of civilian control and democratic quality. Therefore, it is essential for democracies to be wary of militarising security discourses.
To evaluate global patterns and trends in the role of the military in politics, we consider three aspects of material militarisation: coup d’états, military influence on the formation and dissolution of governments, and the relative weight of the military in society.
The number of coup d’états has declined significantly over the last three decades. According to data from Powell and Thyne (2011), a total of 96 coup attempts took place from 1990 to 2019, 55 of which occurred in the 1990s alone. The following decades have seen considerably fewer instances of open military intervention. In the first decade of this century, a total of 23 coup attempts were counted, and there were 18 coup attempts between 2011 and 2019 (see Figure 1). Not all regime types are similarly vulnerable to coups, however. In fact, coups are overwhelmingly a problem for authoritarian and hybrid regimes. Of the 96 coup attempts counted by Powell and Thyne since the end of the Cold War, 77 (80 per cent) have occurred in countries that were autocracies in the year previous to the coup according to the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project (Coppedge, Gerring, and Knutsen et al. 2020). Only 19 coup attempts have been staged against formally democratic regimes. These include the 1992 and 2002 coup attempts in Venezuela, the 2006 coup in Thailand, and the 2012 coup in Mali.
A second material form of militarisation is military influence on the making and breaking of governments below the threshold of a military coup. This includes, on the one hand, the military’s role in state and regime security operations. When political leaders are challenged by mass protests that overwhelm the capacities of the civilian security apparatus, the military becomes the regime’s last line of defence. In these “endgames” (Pion-Berlin, Esparza, and Grisham 2014), the military ultimately decides on the political fate of the political leaders. A crucial example is Venezuelan president Maduro’s ability to stay in power in the face of two years of ongoing protests, secured not least by political and coercive support from the country’s military. During the 2019 anti-regime protests in Algeria and Sudan, on the other hand, the countries’ leaders lost the support of the military, which sided with the opposition and toppled presidents Bouteflika and al Bashir (Kuehn, Croissant, and Eschenauer-Engler 2019). As is the case with coups, these “endgame” situations mainly occur in dictatorships. Military involvement in violence against unarmed anti-government protests is extremely rare in democracies, where strong constitutional safeguards as well as professional military norms regulate and prohibit such operations. Instances such as those during the 2019/20 Chilean protests, where democratically elected presidents call on the army to disperse (mostly) peaceful demonstrators, are the exception rather than the rule (Pion-Berlin and Acácio 2020).
On the other hand, military influence on government formation and dissolution can also take a more institutionalised form, with the executive being dependent on the military’s at least tacit support. Drawing on data from the V-Dem project, Figure 2 shows the average dependence of governments on the military’s support in autocracies and democracies since the end of the Cold War.[2] The figure suggests that, on average, military influence on governments is considerably and consistently higher in non-democratic regimes than in democracies. However, even in dictatorships the overall dependence of the political leaders on the military has been almost steadily declining since the early 1990s. In democracies, in turn, we see a steady level of very low military influence, which has increased slightly in the last few years, however.