Traditional Authoritarian States
The most familiar traditional authoritarian regime is that of the "monarchy," in which rule belongs to a "king," "queen," "emperor/empress," or "amir," "Sultan," or single ruler by any other title. The monarchy ordinarily was hereditary although there were also cases of elective monarchies: The Holy Roman Emperor ordinarily was one of several noblemen bearing the title of "Elector" and would be elected by his fellow-Electors. Although the regimes of such modern states as Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and Holland are called "constitutional monarchies" in each of these states the monarch is little more than a ceremonial figure who lacks the absolute power enjoyed by traditional monarchs. However the king of Saudi Arabia is a true example of a traditional monarch. When rule was shared by several noblemen (and occasionally noble-women) the arrangement was known as an "aristocracy," liternally the "rule of the best." Aristocracy was also hereditary, with eldest sons ordinarily inheriting the titles and privileges of the aristocratic father. Occasionally non-aristocrats could be inducted into the ranks of aristocracy from time to time, as happened when a non-noble was "knighted" or sometimes when a non-noble was designated as sole heir by a childless nobleman. Where a group of people shared power without any pretense of nobility you had what was called an "oligarchy." Renaissance Venice and the Hanseatic League of German-speaking cities along the coasts of the Baltic Sea were ruled by councils of leading businessmen and shippers - entry or exit from these elite groups depended on your success in business.
Plato mentions 'tyranny' among the forms of government and many modern people see no difference between a 'monarchy' and a 'tyranny' since both involved absolute rule by one person. The difference lies in this: the traditional monarch might be an absolute ruler in the sense that he or she was not responsible to any other earthly authority but generally the monarch's roles and privileges were constrained by tradition and religion: A king of a Roman Catholic nation had also to be a Roman Catholic and had to obey the laws of that Church. Monarchs who failed to live up to the norms of their office could be prevailed upon to abdicate. A tyrant, by contrast, was one whose claim to rule depended purely upon brute force: The tyrant would not be limited by tradition or religion. Another way of looking at the distinction is to regard the tyrant as an 'illegitimate' monarch who could be removed from power only by brute force.
Oddly enough the ancient Greek and Roman democracies and republics can also be regarded as authoritarian systems because even when they represented the rule of the majority often this rule was not tempered by respect for the rights of the minority. Majority rule in Greek city-states was often arbitrary and lawless: Often citizens could be banished or put to death for no other reason than that the ostracized person was too wealthy, too successful, too good-looking, or else had antagonized too many people, as was the case with Socrates. In any case these arbitrary and lawless democracies did not represent the majority of the people: usually only native-born male Greeks, aged 30 and older, were allowed to vote. The women, non-native Greeks, and large population of foreign non-Greek traders and slaves were not allowed to vote.
Another traditional authoritarian system was that of a theocracy, literally, "the rule of God." Of course God Himself did not rule in person. The ancient government of the Israelites under Moses, Joshua, and the succession of "judges" down to the prophet Samuel was an example of a theocracy: the rulers ruled not as personal kings or as an aristocracy but rather as servants and spokesmen of an unseen deity. Until the Chinese takeover of Tibet in the 1950s that isolated nation was ruled by Buddhist priests known as "lamas" with a hierarchy headed by the Dalai Lama who was regarded as the reincarnation of a living Buddha, or 'bodhisattva.' Afghanistan under the Taliban and the current Islamic Republic of Iran are examples of contemporary theocratic states because in each of them the ruling elites base their claim to rule upon Islamic religious law and themselves claim to be the enforcers of the will of Allah on Earth. Vatican City is also technically a theocracy since the Pope, assisted by his cardinals, rules the tiny Italian city-state as the "Vicar of Christ," one who rules the Catholic Church as Christ's steward until the second coming.
In the contemporary world one can find examples of monarchies, aristocracies, oligarchies, tyrannies, as well as theocracies. In that sense alone they are also 'modern' authoritarian states but what are true modern authoritarian states are those that seek to disguise the authoritarian nature of their rule with some pseudo-constitutional and pseudo-democratic trappings.
Modern Authoritarian States
Many, if not most, of the political regimes in the various "newly-industrializing countries" and "less developed countries," are authoritarian, or quasi-authoritarian. Most of these nations have well-written documents called "constitutions" with an impressive number of explicit guarantees or personal rights and liberties and human rights. However, in many of these nations such written constitutions play even less of a role in the actual operation of the political system than is played by the British monarch in the current British political system. At least British government officials pay Queen Elizabeth a sort of deference that most Third World officials seldom pay to their own alleged written constitutions.
Authoritarian rule is characterized by, 1) a monopoly, or near-monopoly, of political power by a ruling elite, which is not shared, or circulated or made accountable to the rest of society by any democratic or constitutionalist process, and 2) a partial subordination of society to the political system which leaves many areas of social life with substantial freedom so long as the leaders perceive those aspects of society as being politically non-threatening to their rule.
Two devices used by several modern regimes to maintain their authoritarian control include 1) the use of a single legal political party, or a "dominant" party in a supposedly multi-party system, as a means of containing and controlling domestic politics and competing interests, and 2) requiring those groups, which would otherwise be considered private and voluntary associations in a liberal democracy, to enter into a formal relationship with the regime as a means for regulating their activities. This system of co-optation, known as corporatism, was also an aspect of the totalitarian systems devised by Germany's Nazi Party and Italy's Fascist Party, but it can be used for the more limited purposes of authoritarian rule: either to enlist important segments of society into actively supporting the regime or at least regulating them in such a manner that they do not become an open threat to the regime's monopoly of power. It should be noted that even in some liberal democracies there are some features that resemble corporatism, such as granting rights of collective bargaining to specific unions, or allowing professional associations to set the legal requirements to hold a license as a member of that profession. In either case the government is in effect lending its coercive powers to a private association to compel others to join or support those associations.
The single, official party device is actually a hallmark of totalitarian regimes in which those associations that would have remained as co-opted private groups in an authoritarian and corporatist system would actually become branch organizations of the central, ruling party. While the single, official party system predominates in most totalitarian regimes, and only a few authoritarian regimes, there are also some unusual cases in which the official state party co-exists with other minor parties. In the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) there were actually four officially-recognized non-Communist opposition parties. In Mexico the Institutional Revolutionary Party allowed a number of opposition parties to compete in national elections and to win up to 49 percent of the popular vote. The telling test of whether or not such "multi-party systems" really are democratic or not is whether any of the non-official parties are allowed to win an election or whether members of the minority parties are allowed to participate in the executive administration of the country. The recent July 2, 2000 presidential election in Mexico in which the PRI relinquished control over the election process and allowed itself to be defeated in polls may indicate that Mexico is making the transition from an authoritarian state to a democratic one.
During the 1960s many American political scientists, including Samuel P. Huntington, believed that many developing nations were incapable of carrying on both economic modernization and political modernization simultaneously. Instead many development theorists, with Huntington at their lead, proposed that such authoritarian societies should first concentrate on economic modernization and top-down social reforms. After two of three decades of successful development then the people of these developing nations would be sufficiently educated and sophisticated enough to be allowed to participate in the development of a functioning democracy. The actual economic and political development of some countries, notably Spain, Chile, and Turkey, followed this model. In this pattern of staged development it seemed to make sense to allow one political party to function as a quasi-democratic official party. In retrospect an examination of those nations that opted for single, officially-sponsored parties does not reveal that they made more rapid economic or social progress or that they democratized more quickly than authoritarian regimes that permitted a multi-party system to emerge. In fact much of the available evidence suggests that those countries that opted for one-party states experienced significantly more "crony-ism," nepotism, graft and corruption than did those nation-states in which political parties were subjected to the discipline of the popular vote.
One reason developing nations were captivated by the one-party system as a vehicle of economic progress and development was the apparent dramatic progress made in the Soviet Union under the one party dictatorship there. Even though leaders and elites in many developing nations were not attracted to the Marxist-Leninist ideology of communism they were spell-bound by the apparent dynamism, zeal, and efficiency of the one party system. Therefore many developing nations, particularly Mexico and post-Ottoman Turkey, tried to create their own non-communist version of a one-party state, part of which involved creating some version of corporatism in order to "co-ordinate" the rest of society with the party program. However towards the end of the Soviet system it had become blatantly apparent that crony-ism, nepotism and corruption had become endemic even within the "vanguard of the proletariate," the Communist Party. With the collapse of the Soviet system the spell of the "one-party state" affixation has finally been broken in most areas of the world where it formerly held sway.
Military Dictatorships
Just as political scientists concerned with development once looked to one-party states as one possible non-democratic avenue for development (and, it was fondly hoped, for eventual democratization) they also once looked to the armed forces of certain countries as another potential means for modernization and eventual democratization. Partly this belief in the potential of military-controlled or dominated governments was to make a virtue out of necessity: For much of the 1960s and 1970s a large number of military dictatorships could be found among the developing nations. In cases where a developing country was under a military dictatorship whatever development was to happen had to involve the military.
However there was another and better reason for seeing military governments as possible vehicles for modernization and democratization. Generally three types of elite leadership existed in the developing countries: There were older, traditional elites of landowners, clergymen, bazaar merchants, guildsmen, and the "courtiers," of hangers-on of the ruling royal family. These classes generally had the most to lose in any economic modernization or democratization and they could be counted upon to oppose such change. There were also, however, the "new elites" of emerging professionals (doctors, engineers, lawyers), self-made businessmen, and civil servants of modernizing states. These had much to gain from modernization but members of these classes were inclined to try to keep the benefits of modernization to themselves. Then were was another "new elite" of university students, faculty members, unemployed graduates, labor organizers and skilled industrial workers. These classes would increase as a by-product of modernizing efforts but they would also be resentful over their lower incomes and low social status. These were more likely to be attracted to the Marxist-Leninist vision of social and economic transformation through violent revolution. What really was needed was a modernizing elite that was committed to bringing the benefits of modernization to the country as a whole and which did not itself represent just one class, or tribal group, or ethnicity within the nation. The officer corps of emerging professional military systems appeared to be a patriotic and more inclusive elite than the previously mentioned elites.
Before proceeding to discuss the role of military regimes a typology of military forces is in order. The figure on the following page shows the three main types of military systems. The "Professional Military," like the U.S. Armed Forces remains subordinate to civilian authority and its officers are expected to remain aloof from civilian politics and politicians. The "Revolutionary Military" is subordinate to civilian authority--namely the ruling political party--and acts more or less as the military wing of the Party. The army not only serves to protect the country against foreign invasion but also to crush any internal opposition to the ruling party or leader. Officers are expected to be Party members in good standing and "Political Officers" are assigned, almost like chaplains, to military units to ensure the ideological purity, commitment and orientation of both officers and troops. The Red Army of the former Soviet Union and the SS officers and troops of the Nazi Third Reich are both examples of revolutionary armies. The third type of military is one that is not necessarily subordinate to civilian authority nor is it necessarily politically neutral. These "praetorian militaries" often behave as if they were professional military systems but if they disapprove of the direction in which the civilian politicians are leading the nation they may stage a coup d'état, overthrowing their elected rulers and imposing their own dictatorship over the nation. These three military systems are the ones most commonly found among the armed forces of nation-states. The fourth type, called the "traditional military," are really the personal militias or bodyguards of subnational rulers and need not concern us here.
The emerging professional armed forces, however, cut across the social barriers that separated classes and had the potential to create national unity. Whereas the "traditional" armies were merely the personal levies, or sometimes even the household servants, of traditional leaders, the modern, professional armies try to recruit enlisted men and officers on the basis of skills and merit. National conscription meant that many young men, who otherwise would have spent their entire lives in the isolated, parochial political cultures of their remote villages, were suddenly exposed to a new way of life cut off from the traditional structure of the village. They were forced to move into barracks near urban centers and were inevitably exposed to unfamiliar ways of life and new ideas. For many this was also an experience that taught them to identify with the nation-state rather than merely their extended family or village. The officers corps was one of the few vehicles of social mobility available to young men of very poor and rural backgrounds. If one examines the backgrounds of a number of the charismatic leaders of modernization in developing countries you find a disproportionate number were military officers of humble origins: Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt; Kamel Atatürk of Turkey; Sukarno and his successor, Suharto, both of Indonesia; and Chiang Kai-Shek of China were military officers. Another aspect of the officers corps of certain nations made them appear more amenable to promoting modernization and ultimate
Are the Armed Are the Armed
Forces Forces
Politically Subordinate to
Active? Civilian Authority?
|---------------|------------------|
Professional Miliary | NO | YES |
|---------------|------------------|
Revolutionary Miliary| YES | YES |
|---------------|------------------|
Praetorian Military | YES | NO |
|---------------|------------------|
Traditional Military |Depends on traditional ruler-is he|
|politically active or subordinate |
|to central civilian power or not? |
|----------------------------------|
Summary of Types of Military Systems
democratization: in the cases of nations with which the United States had military aid agreements many of their junior and senior officers spent time in the United States undergoing advanced training. In countries in which U.S. Status of Forces Agreements were in effect, U.S. military officers often lived and trained among the junior officers and NCOs. This often meant that members of these foreign armed forces often developed friendships with their American counter-parts, often admired American values, and were eager to maintain good relations with the United States. [Of course sometimes this boomeranged and produced unintended results. In the late 1950s two Pakistani Air Force officers driving from Washington D.C. to undergo training at a U.S. Air Force facility in Alabama stopped at a roadside diner to have a meal only to be told by the proprietor that they didn't served "coloreds." Needless to say this experience was one which their American sponsors neither anticipated nor desired.]
Whether or not military elites or military-led regimes would lend themselves well to the modernization and democratization of a developing nation will depend on the type of military involved as well as the political culture and history of the particular nation. Another possibility seems much more obvious, namely, that military regimes would serve traditional or modern elites as instruments of oppression and would themselves become obstacles to democratization or other social progress.
The rise of military dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s was due in part to a rise in leftist revolutionary insurgencies in many developing nations, particularly in the form of urban guerrilla movements. In 1968 an aging Brazilian Communist leader, Carlos Marighella, disgusted with the lack of progress communists had made using the open political electoral process, decided to re-write the strategy manual for aspiring revolutionaries. His Manual of the Urban Guerrilla became a favorite for would-be revolutionaries in both the developing and developed nations. His theory was deceptively simple: If urban guerrillas could provoke the authorities of a country enough with hit-and-run tactics eventually the regime would over-react and crack down on citizens across all walks of life in an attempt to hit at the revolutionaries. This over-reaction would in turn provoke the citizens and turn them into sympathizers with the guerrillas. This, in turn, would provoke more reactionary violence by the regime, and so on, until the masses would rise up in a 'spontaneous revolt.' At that point everyone, of course, was expected to embrace the guerrillas as the natural leaders of the revolution.
Like most self-contained and un-empirical Marxist-Leninist dialectical reasoning this appeared self-evident only to those who believed in it. All it lacked (alas!) was confirmation by empirical test and experiment. Nonetheless the various leftist guerrilla groups proceeded to put Marighella's untested idea into practice. The only country where this strategy appeared to succeed was in Nicaragua, where a democratic opposition to the dictator Anastasio Somoza had already been simmering for a long time. The first part of Marighella's strategy proved to be true . . . the military forces in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay did over-react brutally, sometimes blowing up entire apartment complexes to kill one sniper. The other half of the strategy did not turn out as Marighella predicted. Most of the middle class and average citizens in the countries experiencing this urban guerrilla warfare blamed the leftist, urban guerrillas for the violence and disorder. However they also blamed their democratic, civilian-led governments for not taking stronger steps to stomp out the leftists. Eventually the military would take over, declare a "state of siege" (= a suspension of the constitution along with suspension of ordinary civil liberties) and would succeed in stomping out the guerrillas, often to the applause of the general citizenry. In other words instead of leading to a leftist mass revolution, these various urban guerrilla movements only succeeded in bringing to power right-wing military dictatorships which often then proceeded to eliminate leftists systematically, even those who had never engaged in political violence. These regimes, which seemed a common feature in Latin America, were referred to as "Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Regimes" by dependency theorists who viewed them as the product of outside interventionist forces (i.e. U.S.-inspired) or else of the internal "comprador" middle classes. In fact it should be noted that certain of these military dictatorships actually pursued leftist programs and many of them were hostile to the United States.
The resurgence of democracy in these countries in the 1980s was partly due to the fact that many of these countries had experienced democracy in the past (albeit with the usual imperfections of democracies in developing nations). Most of the people in these nations still desired democracy. Also the generals often proved to be very inept at managing the economic and social problems of these developing nations. In some cases later guerrilla insurgencies did sap the strength of the military governments which then were forced to democratize in order to forestall a real leftist revolution (as happened in El Salvador, Chile, and Ecuador). Also the excessive brutality of some of these regimes cost them their legitimacy, as was the case in Argentina and Chile.
Many dependency theorists have portrayed leaders of military coups as somehow acting wittingly at the behest of foreign meddlers, i.e. "gringo" politicians in Washington, D.C., or investment bankers on Wall Street. Rather than devoting more space to demolish once more a hackneyed political stereotype let me refer students interested in this topic to The Military and State in Latin America, by Alain Rouquie, translated by Paul E. Sigmund, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), which is available in the Eli M. Oboler Library (JL 956 .C58 R681B).
Another Perspective on Military Interventions
Most American political scientists are steeped in a formal moral-legalistic culture and tend to view political violence as being somehow abnormal, undesirable and even immoral. Consequently most of them hold the idea of military coups in horror and regard military regimes with moralistic disdain as intrinsically illegitimate. What many development theorists tend to forget is that historically and comparatively the separation of political and military affairs is itself rather a recent and exceptional phenomenon, not unlike the separation of church and state which was unthinkable barely three centuries ago. In many newly developing countries, especially where the military played a foundational role in establishing the nation-state, the ethic of a non-political professional military establishment subject to civilian rule is relatively new and not well-integrated into the political culture of the country.
However, just as the established Churches of the various European nations became corrupt and diverged from their spiritual missions when they were official state institutions so too have the militaries of military-run regimes tended to experience corruption due to their engrossment in civilian affairs.
The other point that should force a more balanced reassessment of the role and value of political violence, and particularly military coups, in developing nations, is that often the corruption and incompetence of many governments in developing nations create political impasses from which there may be no deliverance save by violent overthrow of the regime. In Lebanon the untenable confessional system and the presence of Palestinian guerrilla organizations led to a civil war in which thousands of people perished and in which militias assumed rule over vast areas of Lebanon. In Indonesia the paralysis of Sukarno's unwieldy coalition of right-wing Muslim nationalists and Indonesian and Chinese Communists led to mob violence in which by official U.S. estimates over 67,000 people were slaughtered. The true figure was closer to 300,000. In Chile (1970-1972) and in Turkey (1976-1980) the rampages of leftist and rightist street gangs and "death squads" left the militaries of these respective nations with the choice of sitting idly and watching their nation dissolve in flames and political bloodshed, or else of using force to end the near-anarchy. The formal legal-moral idealist objects to military coups and military dictatorship on the grounds that these fall short of the standards of a liberal democracy. The problem is that the real choice facing such nations involves the alternative of military coup and rule and something much worse than the mere lack of liberal democracy. While the military coup d'état is not appealing to any believer in liberal democracy it is the least objectionable alternative to nameless mob violence or militia-run gangsterism.
Review Terms: Traditional Authoritarian Regimes: - monarchy - aristocracy - oligarchy - tyranny - direct democracy - theocracy Modern Forms of Authoritarian Rule: - corporatism - dominant party system - single-party system - military dictatorships military systems - praetorial military system - professional military system - revolutionary military system - traditional military system Suggested Readings: Dye, Thomas R. Dye and Harmon Zeigler, "Socialism and Militarism," _PS: Political Science and Politics_, (December 1989): 800-813. Frankland, Erich G. "Under the Gun in El Salvador: The Evolving Relationship Between the Military and Democracy," _Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement_, 3, 1 (1994): 104-135. Roquie, Alaine, _The Military and State inLatin America_, translated by Paul E. Sigmund, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Sloan, Stephen. _A Study in Political Violence: The Indonesian Experience_, Studies in Political Change Series, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1971.