The Military, Militarization and Democratization in Africa: A Survey of Literature and Issues

The studies of African military establishments that appeared from the late 1960s, after the first wave of coups, were very much the products of their time. The theories of modernization and political development that were their starting point were the ideas of an epoch: that of decolonization, nation-building, internationalization of capital, consolidation of U.S. hegemony, and globalization of American social science. They are of interest now because aspects of that epoch are repeating themselves: in particular, the reassertion of U.S. and western hegemony, the return to free market orthodoxy, and a “third wave” of transitions to democracy (Huntington 1991). Three overlapping debates dominated the literature on the military in developing countries during the 1960s and 1970s. They revolved initially around the conditions of democracy and civilian control. They shifted to the role of the military in modernization or development as armies moved into politics, then focused on political order following deep hegemonic crises in developing countries themselves and in their relations with the West. Early studies of newly formed African armies and police establishments saw them as part of an institutional transfer of western paradigms of governance, along with the Westminster model and Gaullist presidentialism. Military professionalism was integral to the neocolonial enterprise of transferring power to elites, requiring accelerated training in metropolitan and local academies of African “Narcissuses in uniform” (First 1970, chap. 3).