CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Tófalvi, Fruzsina |
|---|---|
| Title | Military Disloyalty and Regime Change: A Comparative Examination of Loyalty Shifts in the Armed Forces |
| Summary | This study applies a comparative analysis of loyalty shifts in the armed forces during popular uprisings for regime change in authoritarian states in the period of 1990-2012. The theoretical framework proposes that the relationship in the armed forces between superiors and subordinates can be described as a principal-agent relationship. Accordingly, there are two fundamental loyalty-creating methods: rewards and control. The thesis examines a series of variables that enable these two mechanisms to function in the military: loyalty creation through financial benefits and the privileged position of the armed forces, and a series of selection procedures that keep the armed forces distant from society, including the creation of voluntary forces and the application of discriminative selection procedures to both the rank and file and the officer corps. In the thesis I use both statistical and case study analyses. Firstly, I test a sample of 48 cases by statistics to examine whether the proposed variables influence loyalty. In the second half of the thesis I compare three cases from the Arab Spring, Egypt, Syria and Bahrain in order to find qualitative differences and identify the dynamics of disloyalty. The findings prove that the privileged position of the military has a considerable positive effect on loyalty and the distance of the armed forces from society also matters. However, the discriminative selection of the rank and file is the “privilege” of a few states (e.g. Bahrain), therefore, its effect remains questionable; furthermore, the effect of increasing defense budget is also doubtful. |
| Supervisor | Carsten Q. Schneider |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/tofalvi_fruzsina.pdf |
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