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The Comparative Analysis of Military Regimes: Formations, Aspirations, and Achievements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Amos Perlmutter
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science and Sociology at The American University, Washington D.C.
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Abstract

Recent literature demonstrates that modern military regimes are actually military-civilian coalitions. The old dichotomy of civil/military is no longer a useful explanation for the politics and the dynamics of military regimes. Role expansion, new professionalism, and mission orientation have changed military missions, doctrines, and self-perception. The author proposes and develops a comparative analysis and a typology of contemporary military regimes: corporative; market-bureaucratic; socialist-oligarchic; personal tyrannies; and army-party. Case studies include Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. His conclusion, based on the literature, is that military regimes have not succeeded (at least not better than civilian regimes) in reforming, modernizing, and developing their respective societies despite organizational, structural, and personal commitments to development and reform.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1980

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References

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12 Ibid., 166.

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