The Role of Society in the Control of Armed Forces – Implications for Democracy

Abstract

conceptualizations of SSR, within the domestic contexts in Southeast Asian countries, as a tool to alter the power balance in the state, rather than to improve the governance of the security sector, amongst civilian and military elites.What the three cases furthermore illustrate is that actors in the region generally chose to support or curtail SSR on the basis of their (perceived) particular interests and their institutional background. Therefore, SSRrelated reforms in all three cases have quickly become enmeshed in national power politics. Moreover, their scope as well as their success has, albeit to different degrees, relied on interpersonal loyalties and patronage networks between the respective political leadership and the armed forces. As a result, civilian control over the military remains insufficiently institutionalized in all three cases. widened its political leverage and autonomy. The continued politicization of the armed forces was aggravated by repeated attempts of successive governments to coopt certain factions within the military to ensure regime survival. While formerly under civilian control, several civilian control mechanisms such as military promotion are frequently instrumentalized by civilian elites to foster personal patronage networks with high ranking generals. With regard to Thailand, little, if anything, is left of SSR after the coups in 2006 and 2014. For the time being, the military controls virtually all areas of public policymaking, operates independently of any form of control by civilian, democratically elected institutions, and is likely to do so for some time. The dearth of SSR, however, did not come about through the two coups alone, but is contingent on longstanding