Military Relations and Government

Eugene Albert Olarte Javillonar January 14, 2014

IV AB-MA POS Sir Lim

Military Relations and Government

I. Proposal

The statement of the problem for this paper is what could cause the military of a nation to take
over the civilian government?

This paper will focuses on the aspect of the military, which concerns the perception of the
civil society. The historicity of the militaries operate on the premise of the existence of the
distinction of roles. Militaries have often been given specific roles to be played for the entirety of the
nation. The military must protect the nation from outside threats; the military must maintain peace
and balance within the nation; the military must conquer other lands; the military must keep the
nation safe while securing a status of a high-ranking armed forces in the global setting. This is
something that the military has to adhere to in order to maintain their professionalism demanded
from them by the state and civil society. Although the military is considered elite in the classes of the
people within the nation, it is safe to say that for most cases, the military is at times inferior to both
civil society and the state.

Using concepts taken from authors such as Feaver, Huntington, Janowitz, and Rebecca
Schiff; this paper will build on the concepts surrounding civil-military relations. These authors give
theories giving solutions and hypothesis to the reasons or cases why the military would take the
opportunity to take over the civilian government. Rebecca Schiff’s Concordance theory bring about
a major theory that will be used in this paper because she applies the concept of culture that acts as
cushions that level out tensions and keep the military of nations under civilian control; at the same
time if these are not followed the military will have a stronger urge to go beyond civilian control.
The theoretical framework for this paper is that militaries will remain under the control of
the civilian powers as long as the military is being benefited and not undermined in their own
dealings; if this does not happen the military will take action against civilian power; this framework
being derived strongly from Schiff’s Concordance theory.

With this framework the paper will apply it to the cases of the Philippines and Thailand;
using their history of the military being subversive to their civilian powers and using the literature to
see what was done or not done to help the military in their choice to act out.