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Conditions of civilian control in new democracies: an empirical analysis of 28 ‘third wave’ democracies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2016

David Kuehn ,
Aurel Croissant ,
Jil Kamerling ,
Hans Lueders  and
André Strecker
David Kuehn*
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Germany
Aurel Croissant
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Germany
Jil Kamerling
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Germany
Hans Lueders
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Stanford University, USA
André Strecker
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Germany
*
*E-mail: david.kuehn@ipw.uni-heidelberg.de
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Abstract

Institutionalizing civilian control over the military is a crucial challenge for newly democratized nations. This paper aims to answer the question under which conditions civilian control can be established after the transition to democracy, and under which conditions civilian control fails. To answer this question, we draw on original data on civil–military relations in 28 new democracies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America and run a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. We find that no single explanatory factor can be considered necessary for the success or failure of civilian control in new democracies, but identify a number of sufficient variable combinations to explain the development of civil–military relations after the transition to democracy.

Keywords

civilian controldemocratizationmilitaryfuzzy setsQCA

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 425 - 447
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2016 

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