Previous Military Rule and Democratic Survival

• In Event: Regime Change in the Shadow of Coups

Abstract

Existing scholarship shows that a history of military rule increases the risk of democratic breakdown. However, scholars have paid relatively little attention to the fact that military rule takes two distinct forms: collegial and personalist military regimes. I argue that the two types of military rule provide dierent structural settings for post-authoritarian contexts. Collegial military regimes usually
have unied and disciplined militaries as their seizure group. These militaries tend to remain organized, politicized, and politically powerful in emerging democracies, which in turn increases the risk of military intervention. This is not true of personalist military regimes in which militaries tend to be fractionalized and lack a strong hierarchy. I hypothesize that only collegial military rule endangers the survival of the ensuing democracies. Empirical analysis provides supporting evidence that democracies established after collegial military rule are more likely to break down than other democracies, including those emerging from personalist
military rule.

Author

• Nam Kyu Kim, Sungkyunkwan University