CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Ali, Hager |
|---|---|
| Title | Making and Breaking Regimes. Reconceptualizing the Role of Armed Forces in Regime Change. |
| Summary | This thesis analyzes the impact of civil-military relations on transitional outcomes in Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya during the Arab Spring 2011, and investigates why militaries would support democratization. The present research expands on the study of military behavior in domestic politics and sheds light on military activities beyond warfare and territorial security beyond combat. The analysis first constructs a sequential model of military decisions and outcomes to derive two hypotheses in the first step.It is hypothesized that armed forces are more likely to defect and expedite regime change if they have a better relation to citizens than to the government (H1). Furthermore, assuming that democracy requires the high cost of civilian control by definition, armed forces are more likely to allow democratization when the benefits of democracy to their function and wellbeing outweigh the cost of civilian control (H2). Through constructing a two-dimensional framework that encompasses a polity-military and a citizen-military dimension, the analysis compares civil-military relations between the dimensions, within and across the cases. The hypotheses are tested using empirical and formal modeling jointly with the purpose of completing the sequential model with utility functions for every decision path. The analysis finds that militaries not only matter in transitions, but that their decisions are decisive. Additionally, to support democratization, democracy has offer at least the same payoff as a defection, which should have the same utility as a military takeover, despite the high cost of civilian control. |
| Supervisor | Matthijs Bogaards |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/ali_hager.pdf |
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