Military Norms of Political Supremacy: Explaining Coups in Sudan & Pakistan

• In Event: Security Issues in South Asia

Abstract

The classic problematique of civil-military relations revolves around the delicate balance between nurturing a military that holds enough power to overcome any security threat to the state and, at the same time, submissive enough only to do what civilians authorize it to do. The military, carrying all the force necessary to crush and replace its civilian leadership at will, would not do so unless it feels politically superior to it. In other words, the prevailing arguments in the literature about the causes of coups — named triggers in this study — such as political and economic crises or the threat of a foreign invasion all hang on the presence of the Military Norms of Political Supremacy (MNPS). This study introduces the MNPS, made up of specific and measurable norms, as a necessary cause of coups that work along the triggers present in the literature. In doing so, MNPS can help explain the historical recurrence of military coups in both Sudan and Pakistan.
This study is dedicated to investigating the underlying reasons for military coups by examining the role of norms in shaping the military's perspective on politics. The literature offers a range of diverse and contradictory explanations for military coups, making it challenging to comprehend numerous cases. Furthermore, there is a clear absence of an explanation for how militaries perceive the state, civilians, and the political sphere.
The research aims to elucidate the recurrence of coups by constructing a profile of the military's political mindset that is more likely to engage in coups when one or more of the causes of coups are triggered. In other words, the presence of the MNPS and triggers are necessary and jointly sufficient to the occurrence of a military coup. The MNPS – composed of ten norms as detailed in the study - are collectively treated as an independent variable within the existing relationship in the literature between the triggers (second independent variable) and the coup (dependent variable). The study utilizes content analysis of primary data collected from the official public coup speeches announced by coup leaders, as well as personal biographies written by those leaders along with media interviews at the time of the coup.
The significance of the selected two case studies is attributed to the high frequency of their successful and attempted military coups since their independence, in addition to the resemblance of their conditions to other African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Since its independence in 1955, Sudan witnessed a total of 17 coups and coup attempts, six of them were successful coups and 11 failed, the latest successful coup taking place in 2021. Out of the successful coups, one coup leader gave in power to elected civilians willingly within a year of the coup. This instance enriches the case in terms of testing for the MNPS. While Pakistan had a total of seven failed and successful military coups between its independence in 1947 and 1999, four of which were successful.
The analysis of the coup speeches and other primary sources of both cases has yielded promising results that support the research hypothesis; the ten MNPS were found to be strongly present in the words of coup leaders. The presence of MNPS, coupled with the occurrence of triggers, as represented by massive demonstrations and deteriorating economic and political environments prior to the examined military coups, lends the theory explanatory power.
This study holds scholarly and real-life significance in advancing our understanding and potential prevention of military coups. The proposed theory possesses explanatory power that extends beyond the specific cases of Sudan and Pakistan. By repositioning the theories found in the literature to be understood as triggers that are necessary but not sufficient for the occurrence of military coups, this study introduces an additional independent variable of equal importance in predicting outcomes. The Military Norms of Political Supremacy (MNPS), comprising ten norms detectable in the military leadership statements, provides deeper insight into the underlying mindset that drives the military to capitalize on opportunities whenever they arise to fulfill their political vision of state control. By examining the statements of any given military leadership for the possible presence of MNPS, a researcher can identify a potential red flag indicating that this military is prone to launching a coup if the triggers occur.

Author

• Abdelrahman Rashdan, Georgia State University