CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 45

HRANUSH DERMOYAN
reject the dichotomous nature of civil-military relations. She postulates
concordance between the two entities. Concordance theory argues that
the military, the political elites and the citizenry should opt for cooper-
ation, which may or may not include separation but it is not required. 10
According to her, under concordance military intervention by the mili-
tary is less likely to occur. Other authors have attempted to rationalize
why certain militaries behave the way they behave. According to Amos
Perlmutter the dynamics of civil-military relations is related to the spe-
cifi c political system in a given state. 11 He describes states in which the
military has a say in political procedures as praetorian. However, he does
distinguish between historical and modern praetorian states. A typical ex-
ample of a historical praetorian state is the Roam Empire with its Praeto-
rian Guard. In a modern praetorian state the military could intervene and
technically dominate over the executive. 12 Hence, while in some cases the
military controls the country directly, in other cases they more act like a
watchdog of the civilian government with enough infl uence to have a say
in decision making. Perlmutter claims that when a civilian government is
ineff ective the executive cannot control the military. 13
Koonings and Kruijt also claim that the motives for the military to in-
tervene into politics are diff erent and depend on the specifi c circumstanc-
es in a country. They state that “the starting point for the constitution of
political armies is the profound identifi cation of the military with the his-
torical foundation and subsequent fate of the nation” which means that
the military develops a strong identifi cation with the nation they were
meant to defend. 14 In such cases the military takes on the role of the de-
fi ner and protector of a nation’s national interests. Such behavior and
thinking is explained by the fact that the military elite are convinced that
the military should defi ne and protect the national interest because of its
birthright as well as competence. According to Koonings and Kruijt such
thinking is conditioned by the principle of birthright. The military legiti-
mizes their right to intervene into the politics of the nation based on the
perception that it has been at the birth of the nation, has participated and
sacrifi ced itself for the creation of the nation-state.
10
11
12
13
14
Rebecca Schiff , “Civil-military relations reconsidered: A theory of concordance,” Armed
Forces & Society 22, no. 1 (1995): 7-24.
Amos Perlmutter, “The praetorian state and the praetorian army: Toward a taxonomy of civ-
il-military relations in developing polities,” Comparative Politics 1, no. 3 (1969): 382-404.
Ibid., 382.
Ibid., 383.
Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, Political Armies: The military and nation building in the
age of democracy (Zed Books, 2002), 19.
45