Authoritarian armies and democratizing states: how the military influences African transitional politics

Allen, Nathaniel

doi:10.1080/13510347.2018.1515919

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…In many societies, regime stability also continues to intersect with political violence and ethnic segmentation; these linkages help account, even in polities with competitive elections, for the continued ethnic layering of internal security forces by incumbents fearful of dissent (Hassan 2017) and elucidate why autocrats use co-ethnic violent specialists for coup proofing even at the expense of triggering civil conflict (Roessler 2016). In Burundi, Chad, Mali, Uganda and elsewhere, the ethnopolitics of ‘stacked’ militaries has greatly undermined democratisation and fostered civil war (Harkness 2016; Allen 2019).…”

Section: Manifest Destiny: Saf and The Consolidation Of The Sudanese ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Surviving revolution and democratisation: the Sudan armed forces, state fragility and security competition

Verhoeven

2023

J. Mod. Afr. Stud.

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Sudan has for decades been one of Africa's most fragmented polities. Yet arguably the single most consequential actor in its recent history is among the least well studied: the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). For most of post-independence statehood, Khartoum has been ruled by generals. This article places SAF in a longitudinal context of the expansion and contraction of state power and the functions of the coercive apparatus in these processes. It situates SAF in institutional logics, driven by historically contingent ideas about the nature of the polity, the role of the army within it and its likely partners and enemies. Doing so historicises the strategic calculus of SAF during the 2018–2019 December Revolution which mobilised millions but ended with a new coup in October 2021. I underscore how institutionalised rivalry between SAF and other security services has moulded patterns of regime change and consolidation: from Ja'afar Nimeiri and Omar Al-Bashir to Abdelfatah Al-Burhan today, anxieties over security competition and state fragility shape SAF's willingness to break with regimes it once dominated and its subsequent subversion of revolutionary change and democratisation.

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Section: Manifest Destiny: Saf and The Consolidation Of The Sudanese ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Surviving revolution and democratisation: the Sudan armed forces, state fragility and security competition

Verhoeven

2023

J. Mod. Afr. Stud.

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“…Today, much of the stacking scholarship focuses on a singular axis of identity (Allen, 2019;Harkness, 2016Harkness, , 2018. Scholars might thus seek to better understand how leaders exploit multiple identities through the process of stacking.…”

Section: Layering Multiple Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars of the Arab Spring, for example, have observed that countries in which security forces had ethnic or tribal ties to dictatorships, such those in Syria or Libya, were more likely to repress on behalf of the regime (McLauchlin, 2010;Morency-Laflamme & McLauchlin, 2020;Lutterbeck, 2013;Makara, 2013;Bou Nassif, 2015;Johnson & Thurber, 2020; for a review see Brooks, 2017). Stacking tactics, such as recruiting senior officers or parallel military institutions on the basis of shared political identity, have been shown to be effective in limiting the success of coups (Koren, 2014;Roessler, 2016;De Bruin, 2018), in fueling them (Harkness, 2018), in forestalling democratization (Bratton & Van de Walle, 1997;Harkness, 2017;Hassan, 2017;Allen, 2019) and in catalyzing civil wars (Roessler, 2016). Stacking is thought to impair military success in external and internal conflicts, by undermining efforts to mobilize human capital or to organize militaries to maximize their effectiveness in armed conflict (Brooks, 1998;Lyall, 2020;Pilster & Böhmelt, 2011).…”

Section: Costs Of Stackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unpacking “Stacking”: Researching Political Identity and Regime Security in Armed Forces

Allen

Brooks

2022

Armed Forces & Society

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This article unpacks the phenomenon of identity-based stacking in armed forces to lay the groundwork for a next generation of scholarship, proposing three sets of extensions with examples from regimes in Africa and the Middle East. First, we argue that scholars might treat the concept of stacking with greater nuance by considering variation in stacking’s modal forms, incorporating identities beyond ethnicity, considering how the salience of stacking varies within armed forces, and treating the identities on which stacking is based as malleable. Second, we argue for a more attention to the mechanisms through which stacking operates, such that it can involve layering of multiple bases of identity, be used to manipulate and manufacture identity, and be used to induce in-group competition and rivalry. Finally, stacking scholarship should consider more the costs to a leader’s control over policy and distributional matters and emphasize the trade-offs that various forms of stacking generate among regime security imperatives.

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“…Most of the repression was selective, targeting activists. Yet the killings eroded troops' loyalty, as some voluntarily disarmed (Allen 2019). Even Amadou Toumani Touré, the commander of the paratroop battalion, sided with civil resisters (Pringle 2006).…”

Section: Pathway 2: Religious Homogeneity Targeted Repression and Security Defectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Support for Civil Resistance Movements: When and How Does It Contribute to Regime Change?

Nepstad

2021

Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

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There is substantial research on the influence of elite defections on civil resistance campaign outcomes. Yet most studies focus on defections among security forces, political leaders, and economic elites. In this article, the author examines religious elite defections. Analyzing 99 civil resistance struggles, the author explores whether religious leaders’ support is associated with regime change in authoritarian contexts. The author also uses qualitative comparative analysis to determine the conditions and pathways that lead to a successful outcome. The author illustrates these pathways with four cases (Ukraine’s orange revolution, Mali’s uprising against General Traoré, the Philippine People Power movement, and Malawi’s struggle against President Banda). The results indicate that religious elite defections are not necessary for civil resistance success. However, religious support can contribute critical resources to movements, create a positive flank effect, facilitate security force defections, provide space for resistance in conditions of indiscriminate repression, and activate international networks that can pressure a regime.

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Authoritarian armies and democratizing states: how the military influences African transitional politics

Cited by 11 publications

References 35 publications

Surviving revolution and democratisation: the Sudan armed forces, state fragility and security competition

Surviving revolution and democratisation: the Sudan armed forces, state fragility and security competition

Unpacking “Stacking”: Researching Political Identity and Regime Security in Armed Forces

Religious Support for Civil Resistance Movements: When and How Does It Contribute to Regime Change?

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