Staying Quartered

Abstract

This is a multination study of military disobedience in the face of presidential orders to suppress civilian uprisings. Rather than coercively manipulating the government or seizing power themselves, these insubordinate armies prefer to remain quartered. To determine why, the authors draw on rational, ideational, and structural analytical perspectives on military behavior. The study deploys a qualitative case study method of analysis, identifying seven positive cases (disobedience) and then contrasting those with three negative cases (obedience) to discern whether there is a collection of causal agents that can discriminate between these sets. It finds that disobedience grows out of material grievances, stronger affiliation with public as opposed to government interests, rejection of internal public order roles, illegalities, and splits within the services.

Jumping on the Bandwagon: Differentiation and Security Defection during Conflict

“…In addition, the Interior Ministry maintained a large, parallel security apparatus especially trained and equipped for internal pacification, and the army would only be called in when these militarized police forces would become overwhelmed by an uprising (Barany 2011, 31). This professionalism and clear task separation added to the general reservation that most militaries hold against “policing tasks” (see Pion-Berlin, Esparza, and Grisham 2014, 234-35) and resulted in the Tunisian army resenting to be ordered to help quell the uprisings of 1978 and 1984 (p. 31). Despite this “situational frustration” however, there were no accounts of any insubordination as the army experienced no problems in countering the revolts and had an overall high motivation to keep Bourguiba in power due to their beneficial status (Pachon 2014, 521-23).…”

“…An example of this is Gorbachev’s decision to stay idle over the 1989 uprisings in East Germany, spurring large-scale defections (p. 340). However, bandwagoning is not only a substantial explanans for individual-level defections due to security forces avoiding to fight a losing battle but also because of their organizational preference for cohesion: Pion-Berlin, Esparza, and Grisham (2014) indicate that military leadership eschews ordering deployments that may be divisive among soldiers and that could lead individual units to break away from the force. Uncertainty over the regime’s survival, as well as suppressing (especially nonviolent) insurrections, critically endanger such internal cohesion and increase group-level defections (Lutscher 2016, 356; Pion-Berlin, Esparza, and Grisham 2014, 233-35).…”

How Protesters and the State Learn From One Another: Spiraling Repertoires of Contention and Repression in Ukraine, 1990-2014

“…Alike examples of military disobedience, police and security forces' defections had been spotted in the regimes around the socialist block from 1989, when Honecker's intent to crack down the demonstrations in East Germany was blocked at the last moment by his security chief (Karklins & Petersen, 1993) to decades later, when a failure to enforce the state of national emergency in Georgia lead to fall of regime during the Roses revolution (Polese & Beachain, 2011). Growing literature on the military and security apparatus siding with the opposition suggests the faith of protest is highly affected by defections, just as the regime's survival depends greatly on the capacity of the incumbent elite to digest these lessons (e.g., Gallopin, 2019;Nepstad, 2019;Peon-Berlin et al, 2014).…”

Explaining presidential instability in Latin America: evidence from Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador

“…Another objective is to maintain the cohesion of the institution and prevent any probable split within its ranks. Moreover, the army has a distinct identity and self-image about its proper role, which is determined, partly, by the constitution and other relevant legal provisions (Pion-Berlin et al, 2014). In most presidential crises in Latin America, the army reasoned that suppressing popular uprisings would lead to several political and legal predicaments.…”