Social Polarization and Dynamics of Civil-Military Relations

• In Event: Poster Session: State Politics & Conflict Processes: Violence and Contention by States and Non-State Actors
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Conflict Processes: Violence and Contention by States and Non-State Actors

Abstract

Social polarization erodes trust in democratic processes and threatens domestic peace by deepening divisions and more importantly, leading people to view people from another side of the ideological spectrum as enemies or threats. It is inevitable that the military will also be impacted by this process of social polarization as the members of the military come from a polarized society. After the Congress riots in Brazil, President Lula said many people in the military facilitated the entry of insurrectionists. Lula’s words are indicative of the effect of polarization between right- and left-wing supporters in the country on the Brazilian military. We investigate the question of how social polarization affects the military and aim to explain the impact of that on certain dynamics of civil-military relations. Despite a great deal of research on how social polarization affects public and civilian institutions, the scholarly attention to understanding the effect of social polarization on military and civil-military relations dynamics is extremely limited. We fill this gap by developing a theory of how social polarization affects three particular dimensions of civil-military relations, which are: a) civilian control of military b) military coups c) appointment decisions in the military. We argue that rising polarization will increase the likelihood that military personnel will experience situations where they have to make judgments as to whether they will comply with the main principles of civil-military relations or advance specific values or ideology that a particular military leader or politician supports (Peter 2022). We also argue that some militaries would take advantage of social polarization because as polarization rises, the risk of domestic conflict and instability will also increase. And that would help the military justify its interference in politics and even oust the government on the basis of ending domestic instabilities and restoring order. Finally, polarization would also increase the risk of politicizing the appointment process in the military. Polarization would incentivize politicians to appoint partisan loyalists in military leadership (Dunford, Allison, and Glick-Unterman 2023) as they might not trust other military leaders who disagree with their political beliefs. Moreover, it would affect the appointment of even middle-rank officers since military actors, who also have their own political views, might also want to work with subordinates who share their political views due to their distrust of other officers who don’t share their political views. We test these arguments with time-series cross-national data as well as some illustrative cases from militaries of different types of regimes. Our preliminary quantitative findings and qualitative analysis corroborate our arguments.

Authors

• Cagil Albayrak, University of Kansas

• Ibrahim Kocaman, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

• Mustafa Kirisci, Lebanon Valley College