No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
It Was In 1962 In The Man on horseback, A Book which has long since become a classic, that S. E. Finer drew attention to a class of country in which the government was repeatedly subject to the interference of its armed forces: the military, he noted ‘as an independent political force, constitutes a distinct and peculiar political phenomenon’. Beginning from the political strengths and weaknesses of the military, his analysis addressed the disposition of the military to intervene in politics and its opportunities for doing so, and he brought out the different forms such intervention could take and the different levels to which it could be pressed. In effect, he also turned on its head a prevailing if tacit assumption. Given their ‘vastly superior organization’ and their arms, it seemed to him that ‘Instead of asking why the military engage in politics, we Ought surely ask why they ever do otherwise’.
1 Finer, S. E., The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, London, Pall Mall Press, 1962.Google Scholar
2 ibid., p. 4.
3 ibid., p. 5.
4 ibid., p. 240.
5 Martin Edmonds, Armed Services and Society, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1988, p. 93, p. 103.Google Scholar This book identifies an extensive literature. See also: Nordlinger, Eric A., Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Government, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1977;Google Scholar Perlmutter, Amos and Bennett, Valerie Plave, The Political Influence of the Military: A Comparative Study, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1980;Google Scholar Putnam, Robert D., ‘Toward Explaining Military Intervention in Latin American Polities’, World Politics, 20, pp. 83–111, 1967;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Morris, Janowitz and Doom, Jacques van, On Military Intervention, Rotterdam, Rotterdam University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
6 Finer, op. cit., p. 144.
7 Halberstam, David, The Bat and the Brightest, New York, Random House, 1969.Google Scholar
8 See Holloway, David, Stalin and the Bomb, Yale University Press, 1994 Google Scholar and Bundy, McGeorge, Danger and Survival, New York, Random House Inc., 1988.Google Scholar
9 Finer, op. cit., p. 109.
10 ibid., p. 238.
11 Amalrik, Abdrei, Survey, No. 73, Autumn 1969.Google Scholar
12 Finer, op. cit., p. 74.
13 ibid., p. 88.
14 ibid, p. 73, quoting Lord Beaverbrook, Men and Power, pp. 43–57, 186–216 and 408–14 and Lloyd George, D., War Memories, 2 vols ed., Odhams, pp. 1668–9.Google Scholar
15 See Zuckerman, Solly, Monkeys, Men and Missiles 1986–88, London, Collins, 1988, pp. 463–5.Google Scholar
16 Constantine P. Danopoulos, ‘Military Dictatorship in Retreat Problems and Perspectives’, in Danopoulos, Constantine P., The Decline of Military Regimes, Boulder, Westview Press, 1988, p. 2.Google Scholar
17 Finer, op. cit., p. 14.
18 Michael Gold, reviewing Pickney, Robert, Right-Wing Military Government, Bouton, Twayne, 1990 Google Scholar in American Political Science Review, 85, p. 1062.
19 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, Note to Ch. 6 of Vol. 2.Google Scholar
20 Ronald, Wintrobe, ‘The Tinpot and the Totalitarian: An Economic Theory of Dictatorship’, American Political Science Review, 84, 1990, pp. 849–72.Google Scholar
21 Pakenham, Thomas in his The Scramble for Africa, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991 Google Scholar says that this term was apparently coined in 1884.
22 Engclbrecht, A. C. and Hanighan, F., Merchants of Death, New York, 1934;Google Scholar Mills, C. W., The Power Elite, New York, 1956.Google Scholar
23 Finer, op. cit., p. 241–2.
24 ibid., p. 239.