Author Meets Critics: “Soldiers of Democracy?” by Sharan Grewal

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This Author Meets Critics panel brings together five leading comparativists to discuss Sharan Grewal's book "Soldiers of Democracy? Military Legacies and the Arab Spring" (Oxford University Press, 2023), and work emerging from it.

The book explores why militaries support or thwart democratization and offers a theory that disaggregates across the different forms of breakdown. It argues that militaries that have historically been empowered, like in Egypt, are more likely to repress pro-democracy uprisings, and if that fails, to stage coups against new democracies. Where militaries have instead been marginalized, like in Tunisia, democratization is considerably easier. Yet, marginalized militaries still carry risks of their own, being less able to prevent a descent into civil war, and more easily coopted into incumbent takeovers. In short, the dictator’s choice to either empower or marginalize the military creates legacies that shape both the likelihood of democratization and the forms by which it breaks down. The book illustrates this theory through a cross-national analysis of all countries between 1946-2010, qualitative case studies of Egypt and Tunisia, and three surveys of their militaries.

This panel gathers five prominent scholars with a wealth of expertise in regimes and regime change to reflect on the contributions of the book and discuss the state of research in these subfields. Erica de Bruin (Hamilton), Erica Frantz (Michigan State), Dan Mattingly (Yale), Anne Meng (University of Virginia), and Dan Slater (University of Michigan) have each published widely on security forces, authoritarianism, and democratization. Each also brings expertise on a diverse set of regions and research methodologies, including archival research, interviews, surveys, formal methods, and quantitative analyses. The panel promises an engaging debate on how dictators engage with their security forces and what legacies those strategies create for democratization.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Chairs

• Sharan Grewal American University

• Anne Meng University of Virginia

Presenters

• Daniel Mattingly Yale University

• Erica Frantz Michigan State University

• Erica Susanne De Bruin Hamilton College