Knocking on the barracks’ door: How role conceptions shape the military's reactions to political demands

Abstract

Academic research on civil-military relations often assumes that dangers for democracy and civilian control mainly emanate from the military's predisposition of ‘pushing’ its way into politics. Yet, civilian control frequently is a precondition for governments’ moves of ‘pulling’ the military into roles that may potentially be problematic. These can include the military's involvement in political disputes or internal public security missions. Notwithstanding its empirical relevance, little academic work has been devoted to understanding how ‘pulling’ works. In this article, we aim to provide a first, exploratory framework of ‘pulling’ that captures the dynamics of the military's reactions and indirect consequences for civil-military relations. We identify three analytically distinct phases in which pulling occurs. First, politicians initiate either operational or political pulling moves. Second, we situate the military's reaction on a spectrum that ranges from refusal to non-conditional compliance. This reaction is driven by the military's role conceptions about appropriate missions and their relation to politics. In a third phase, the military may slowly start shifting its role conceptions to adapt to its new roles. We illustrate our argument with case studies of two different instances of pulling: operational pulling in the case of France (2015–19) and operational – then-turned-political – pulling in the case of Brazil (2010–20).

Regime Transformation From Below: Mobilization for Democracy and Autocracy From 1900 to 2021

“…Despite her difference in emphasis from Berman and Riley, she does see that MM can play a role in justifying elite action directed at undermining democracy. This perspective is congruent with the literature on coups that pinpoint their origins with a “knock at the barracks door” by civilian politicians (Harig & Ruffa, 2022). Under such circumstances, civilian protest can serve as a precipitant or a justification for political intervention by the military.…”