Introduction

Abstract

Civilian control of the military is intricately linked to democratic rule. The most minimal definitions of democracy assume that ‘in a democracy the hierarchy of de jure authority favors civilians against the military, even in those cases when the underlying distribution of de facto power favors the military’ (Feaver, 2003: 5). At the same time, it is not ‘natural’ for the military to obey civilians, nor is the subordination of the military under the authority of the civilian political leadership easy to achieve. While civilian control of the military is not a salient concern in established liberal democracies such as the United States, Japan, and Germany (Bruneau, 2011: Ch. 3; Croissant & Kuehn, 2011a: Ch. 3), many developing countries have a long tradition of military political activism. This is also the case for the many nations in Asia where civilian governments in the twentieth century were repeatedly faced with empowered military establishments that considered themselves as the ultimate ‘guardians’ of the nation and demanded special privileges due to their role in processes of decolonization, nation building, and state building (Alagappa, 2001c, 2004; May & Selochan, 2004; Beeson & Bellamy, 2008). Furthermore, in many of these countries it was the military that was the most advanced and powerful state institution and that, in light of weak civilian administrations and failing state bureaucracies, became an important agent of modernization and social change.