Democratization and Military Coups in Africa PDF Download

Author: George Klay Kieh Jr.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793643075
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Democratization and Military Coups in Africa: Post-1990 Political Conflicts studies the seemingly endless cycle of coups that have occurred in Africa since the “Free Officers Coup” of 1952 in Egypt. Unfortunately, after more than three decades of the “third wave of democratization” that began in the 1990’s, military coups remain a firm figure on the African political landscape. Although the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and its successor, the African Union (AU), have developed and implemented anti-coup norms, they have not deterred coup-makers. Contributors to this volume analyze the major fault lines in the body politics of African states that have created the conditions for coup-making and offer suggestions for ending the cycle of coups. Using countries such as Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, and Sudan as case studies, each chapter studies the causes, effects, and evolution of military coups in Africa in order to show that eliminating military coups will require identifying and addressing the root causes of the coup in each affected state.

Author: Chuka Onwumechili
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313388210
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Onwumechili provides an exciting perspective on African military coups and reminds us that democracy is not synonymous solely with Western societies. He examines democracies in traditional Africa and shows how these socieites clearly defined and limited the roles of traditional African armies. From this background, Onwumechili makes readers appreciate that modern African armies are deviant institutions, with no roots in traditional Africa. Rather, he argues, one has to seek those roots in Africa's recent, colonial history. Dr. Onwumechili goes on to describe the reasons for coups and their tactics. Finally, he examines how military coups can be prevented. While previous solutions have largely failed, Onwumechili provides convincing solutions based on case studies.

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa, West
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
For three decades, since the sixties, military coups became a ritual of African politics. They consist of self-perpetuating incidents which spilled into the 1990's, through on a much smaller scale. This book is a chronological sequence of these events in West Africa. The focus is on the coups in sub-Saharan Africa during these turbulent decades, and what can be done to stop them in Africa's quest for democracy.

Author: Larry Jay Diamond
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801862731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 570

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Book Description
"The country-specific chapters serve to underline the differences between African democracy and liberal democracy, yet some authors are at pains to emphasize that whatever their limitations, African democracies are an advance over what had gone before." -- African Studies Review

Author: Ozan O. Varol
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019062602X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
The term coup d'état--French for stroke of the state--brings to mind coups staged by power-hungry generals who overthrow the existing regime, not to democratize, but to concentrate power in their own hands as dictators. We assume all coups look the same, smell the same, and present the same threats to democracy. It's a powerful, concise, and self-reinforcing idea. It's also wrong. In The Democratic Coup d'État, Ozan Varol advances a simple, yet controversial, argument: Sometimes, a democracy is established through a military coup. Covering events from the Athenian Navy's stance in 411 B.C. against a tyrannical home government, to coups in the American colonies that ousted corrupt British governors, to twentieth-century coups that toppled dictators and established democracy in countries as diverse as Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, and Colombia, the book takes the reader on a gripping journey. Connecting the dots between these neglected events, Varol weaves a balanced narrative that challenges everything we thought we knew about military coups. In so doing, he tackles several baffling questions: How can an event as undemocratic as a military coup lead to democracy? Why would imposing generals-armed with tanks and guns and all-voluntarily surrender power to civilian politicians? What distinguishes militaries that help build democracies from those that destroy them? Varol's arguments made headlines across the globe in major media outlets and were cited critically in a public speech by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Written for a general audience, this book will entertain, challenge, and provoke, but more importantly, serve as a reminder of the imperative to question the standard narratives about our world and engage with all ideas, no matter how controversial.

Author: Mathurin C. Houngnikpo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317124294
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The relationship between civil society and the armed forces is an essential part of any polity, democratic or otherwise, because a military force is after all a universal feature of social systems. Despite significant progress moving towards democracy among some African countries in the past decade, all too many African militaries have yet to accept core democratic principles regulating civilian authority over the military. This book explores the theory of civil-military relations and moves on to review the intrusion of the armed forces in African politics by looking first into the organization and role of the army in pre-colonial and colonial eras, before examining contemporary armies and their impact on society. Furthermore it revisits the various explanations of military takeovers in Africa and disentangles the notion of the military as the modernizing force. Whether as a revolutionary force, as a stabilizing force, or as a modernizing force, the military has often been perceived as the only organized and disciplined group with the necessary skills to uplift newly independent nations. The performance of Africa's military governments since independence, however, has soundly disproven this thesis. As such, this study conveys the necessity of new civil-military relations in Africa and calls not just for civilian control of the military but rather a democratic oversight of the security forces in Africa.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309047978
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
The global movement toward democracy, spurred in part by the ending of the cold war, has created opportunities for democratization not only in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but also in Africa. This book is based on workshops held in Benin, Ethiopia, and Namibia to better understand the dynamics of contemporary democratic movements in Africa. Key issues in the democratization process range from its institutional and political requirements to specific problems such as ethnic conflict, corruption, and role of donors in promoting democracy. By focusing on the opinion and views of African intellectuals, academics, writers, and political activists and observers, the book provides a unique perspective regarding the dynamics and problems of democratization in Africa.

Author: David Kuehn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351048759
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Despite the decline in the number of military coups since the 1960s and 1970s, Militaries continue to be crucial political actors in many world regions. Their impact on the democratic development of nations, however, has been mixed. On the one hand, coups against democratically elected leaders in Mali (2012), Egypt (2013), and Thailand (2014) have spelled doom for these countries’ nascent democratic regimes and have ushered in new periods of military dominance in politics. The cases of Portugal (1974), the Philippines (1986), and Tunisia (2011), on the other hand, show that the military’s decision not to defend authoritarian leaders against mass protests contributed crucially to the fall of dictatorships and facilitated transitions to democracy. This volume addresses the military’s ambivalent role as "midwife" or "gravedigger" of democracy and highlights the often multi-layered and complex relationship between militaries’ political behaviour and democratization. The chapters were originally published in a special issue of Democratization.

Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316239489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.

Author: George Klay Kieh
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Unlike other publications on the military and politics in Africa which focus on one or two aspects of the involvement of the military in African politics, this text provides a comprehensive evaluation of the various aspects of military intervention. Such a collection provides useful insights into the military's role in African politics from initial intervention to the performance of military regimes, as well as to disengagement, reengagement, consolidation and finally, the offering of ways to control the problem of intervention.