IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v64y1970i04p1131-1148_13.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Soldiers in Mufti: The Impact of Military Rule Upon Economic and Social Change in the Non-Western States1

Author

Listed:
  • Nordlinger, Eric A.

Abstract

When military officers are either sitting in the governmental saddle or have one foot securely in the stirrup, is it likely that such military controlled governments will pursue policies of socio-economic change and reform? What are the officer-politicians' motivations in reacting to the possibilities of such modernizing changes? Under what conditions are their motivations likely to vary? This essay attempts to answer these questions with regard to the contemporary non-western states. And in making the attempt, I believe that the analysis falls squarely within the purview of certain recent changes that are taking place in the study of comparative politics. These changes may be most broadly depicted as a movement away from that aspect of behavioralism that has focused exclusively upon “inputs,” and away from that dimension of “scientism” that has focused upon abstract concepts at the expense of empirical analysis. The change can also be described (in an overly facile manner) as a movement toward the politics in political science and the government in comparative politics. As is evidenced in LaPalombara's call for “parsimony” in the selection of problems, we should choose problems for analysis that are blatantly political and of obvious contemporary relevance. In approximately half of the contemporary non-western states military officers either occupy the topmost seats of government themselves or they have a marked influence upon the civilian incumbents. And when this fact is placed alongside the potential of most contemporary governments to influence the pace and direction of social and economic change, this essay's central concern fulfills LaPalombara's criterion.

Suggested Citation

  • Nordlinger, Eric A., 1970. "Soldiers in Mufti: The Impact of Military Rule Upon Economic and Social Change in the Non-Western States1," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 64(4), pages 1131-1148, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:64:y:1970:i:04:p:1131-1148_13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400133386/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ekkart Zimmermann, 1979. "Explaining military coups d'etat: Towards the development of a complex causal model," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 13(5), pages 431-441, October.
    2. Bennett, Daniel L. & Bjørnskov, Christian & Gohmann, Stephan F., 2019. "Coups, Regime Transitions, and Institutional Change," Working Paper Series 1281, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    3. William J. Dixon & Bruce E. Moon, 1986. "The Military Burden and Basic Human Needs," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 30(4), pages 660-684, December.
    4. Helmut K. Anheier & Robert Falkner & Ahmed Abd Rabou, 2017. "EU Policies towards Egypt: The Civil Security Paradox," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 8, pages 94-99, June.
    5. repec:bla:glopol:v:8:y:2017:i:s4:p:94-99 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:64:y:1970:i:04:p:1131-1148_13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.