Abstract
Seemingly on the wane today, praetorianism has been a conspicuous phenomenon affecting the politics of post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. A brief look at the statistics reveals that, until the recent changes affecting Africa in the early 1990s, about two-thirds of all outbreaks of post-colonial political violence in sub-Saharan Africa have had military origins. Hardly a country has been spared such events, whether in the form of plots, mutinies, attempted coups or power struggles. A total of nearly seventy violent insurrections have been followed by the military occupation of the institutions of authority. In each case, members of the armed forces have effectively dominated the centres of state sovereignty, sometimes backed by an institutional framework, sometimes not. In 1990, twenty African countries were in this situation.2
This chapter is an abridged version of a text published in full in M.L. Martin, Le soldat africain et le politique: essai sur le militarisme et l’Etat prétorien au sud du Sahara (Toulouse: Presses de IEP, 1990), ch. 5.
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Notes
This chapter is an abridged version of a text published in full in M.L. Martin, Le soldat africain et le politique: essai sur le militarisme et l’Etat prétorien au sud du Sahara (Toulouse: Presses de IEP, 1990), ch. 5.
This is more than in the whole of the rest of the world. Cf. the results published in Etudes polémologiques, 41 (1987) 139–45; see also P. MacGowan, and Thomas H. Johnson ‘African Military Coup d’Etat and Underdevelopment: a Quantitative Historical Analysis’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 22 (1984) 633–66, and ‘Sixty Coups in Thirty Years; Further Evidences regarding African Coup d’Etat’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 24 (1986) 539–46.
I.e., revolutions, especially as described by L.P. Edwards, The Natural History of Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 1927); as well as C. Brinton, Anatomy of Revolution (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1938). See also G.S. Pettee, The Process of Revolution (New York: 1938).
Cf. M.L. Martin, ‘The Rise and “Thermidorization”of Radical Praetorianism in Benin’, in J. Markakis, and M. Waller (eds) Military Marxist Regimes in Africa, (London: Frank Cass, 1986), pp. 58–81.
M.L. Martin, La militarisation des systèmes politiques africains (Sherbrooke: Naaman, 1975).
See G. Tixier, ‘Les gouvernements militaires en Afrique noire’, Revue Juridique et Politique: Indépendance et Coopération, no. 4 (1967); E. Feit, The Armed Bureaucrats: Military-Administrative Regimes and Political Development (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973); S.E. Finer, ‘The Morphology of Military Regimes’, in R. Kolkowics, and A. Korbonsky, (eds) Soldiers, Peasants, and Bureaucrats: Civil-Military Relations in Communist and Modernizing Societies (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), pp. 281–309.
See the analysis of the praetorian argument in A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, ‘Stay by your radios’, Documentation for a Study of Military Government in Tropical Africa (Leyden: Afrika Studiecentrum, 1984).
F. Fehér, The Frozen Revolution: an Essay on Jacobinism (Cambridge and Paris: CUP and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1987).
G. Martin, ‘Idéologie et Praxis dans la révolution populaire du 4 août 1983 au Burkina Faso’, Genève-Afrique, 24 (1986) 37–49; E. Schmitz, ‘Thomas Sankara und die Burkinabische Revolution: ein Staatschef und eine Politik neuen Types’, Afrika Spectrum, 22, 2 (1987) 157–80; also P. Otayek, ‘The Revolutionary Process in Burkina Faso: Breaks and continuities’, in Military Marxist Regimes in Africa, pp. 82–100.
Cf. F. Perrier, ‘Dictature et légitimité en Afrique noire’, in M. Duverger, (ed.) Dictatures et Légitimité (Paris: PUF, 1981), p. 467.
M. Paillet, ‘L’idéologie d’un régime militaire: le cas de la République populaire du Congo’, Année africaine 1974 (Paris: Pedone, 1976), pp. 121–37.
R. Jouffrey, Thomas Sankara et la révolution voltaïque’, Afrique contemporaine, 23 (1984), 44–53; S. Andriamirado, Sankara le rebelle (Paris: Jeune Afrique, 1987).
See B. Contamin and Y.A. Fauré, Chapter 10 below; also A.F. d’Almeida, ‘La privatisation des entreprises publiques en Afrique au sud du Sahara’, Le Mois en Afrique, 21 (June–July 1986), 22 (August–September 1986); J. Alibert, ‘La privatisation des entreprises publiques en Afrique noire francophone’, Afrique contemporaire, 143 (March 1987), 41–2; ‘L’économie des colonels’, Le Nouvel économiste (23 April 1984), 60.
A. Basler, ‘Liberalisierung des Reismarkets in Madagaskar: Anwendungsbezogene überlegungen zu einem Entwinklungs-politischen Gestaltungsproblem’, Afrika Spectrum, 22, 2 (1987) 121–44.
On Benin, see Le Monde, 16 May 1986, p. 7; M. Houndjahone, ‘Le différend américano-béninois; genèse, évolution et fin d’un malentendu, 1976–1983’, Le Mois en Afrique, 19 (1984), 25–31. The same is true for relations with Israel: see O. Ogunbadejo, ‘Black Africa and Israel: Towards a Rapprochement?’, in C. Legum, (ed.), Africa Contemporary Record, 1982–83 (London: 1984), pp. A120–A130.
Janowitz, Military Institutions and Coercion in Developing Nations (Chicago University Press, 1977), ch. 7.
Cf. D.G. Lavroff, ‘La constitutionnalisation des régimes militaires en Afrique noire’, in J.-L. Seurin, (ed.), Le constitutionnalisme aujourd’hui (Paris: Economica, 1984), pp. 200–13.
Centre d’Etude d’Afrique Noire, Aux urnes l’Afrique: élections et pouvoirs en Afrique noire (Paris: Pedone, 1978).
Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss d. verstehende Soziologie (Tübingen: JCB Mohr, 1925), ch. 4.
M. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963).
See P. Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution (New York: Lippincott, 1925); D.C. Rappoport, ‘The Praetorian Army: Insecurity, Venality and Impotence’, in Kolkowics and Korbonsky, op. cit., pp. 265–80.
Except for Argentina; cf. S.P. Huntingdon, ‘Will more Countries become Democratic?’, Political Science Quarterly, 99 (1984) 193–218.
For a description of such attempts to disengage, see L. Sylla, ‘Flux et reflux des dictatures civiles et militaires en Afrique noire’, in L. Hamon (ed.), Morts des Dictatures (Paris: Economica, 1981). For a comparative analysis, see ‘Back to the Barracks’, Third World Quarterly 7 (January 1985), special issue.
A. Rouquié, L’Etat militaire en Amérique latine (Paris: Seuil, 1982).
Traité de Science politique, published under the editorship of Madelaine Grawitz and Jean Leca, 4 vols (Paris, PUF, 1985), does not directly tackle the question of militarism. It is merely referred to in passing in the context of authoritarianism or the transformation of regimes.
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Martin, M.L. (1995). Armies and Politics: The ‘Lifecycle’ of Military Rule in Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa. In: Kirk-Greene, A., Bach, D. (eds) State and Society in Francophone Africa since Independence. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23826-2_6
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