Samuel E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006 original in 1962)
Author: Samuel Finer was a political scientist and historian in the UK who emigrated from Romania as a child. His parents were killed in a V2 rocket strike in 1945. He is instrumental in pioneering the study of politics in the UK and was a prominent contributor to the field of civil-military relationships. His magnum opus, The History of Government from the Earliest Times was completed during his retirement years. He authored 16 books
Central Argument: The book argues that where civilian government structures are less developed or less mature, there exists a greater vulnerability for a military coup.
Synopsis: This book describes the general phenomenon of military intervention in politics in the hundred years or so preceding its publishing. Finer loves to use numbered lists.
- The book is organized around three themes, 1) the strengths of the military—organization and coherence, control of arms, emotional and symbolic status, and military virtues. 2) the motives for intervention (national or sectional. 3) the “mood” to intervene as created by feelings of self-importance or high self-esteem (in militaries) especially when linked to greater national humiliation and frustration.
- Finer develops a paradigm of political development that forms the core of his thesis. For Finer there exists a continuum of political cultural development: 1) mature political cultures. 2) developed political cultures. 3) low political cultures. 4) minimal political cultures.
- He then intersects that with four levels of military interventions: 1) influence. 2) pressure/blackmail. 3) displacement. 4) supplantment.
- Military interventions and countries along the continuum then intersect in a very complex manner. (168) However, he does identify three potential general results: Indirect rule—intervention is limited to the blackmail level. Direct rule—the military becomes the controlling agent. And Dual rule—which rests on two pillars under oligarchic control.
The author notes that neither the capacity for intervention, nor the motivation to do so, nor the mood triggering off action would be sufficient without “opportunity to intervene,” created by increased civilian dependence on the military, particularly in latent or overt crisis situations or by the creation of a power vacuum, combined with the popularity of the military. It is this interplay of disposition and opportunity that constitutes the key to the success or failure of various types of military intervention-from influence and pressure to displacement and supplanting of civil authority. Finer also demonstrates that the political involvement of soldiers is a relatively modern phenomenon with little precedent before 1789. He notes that this arose from five factors in the French Revolution: nationalism, popular sovereignty, the tendency of popular armies toward subversion, the rise of the professionalized officer corps, and the emergence of new states in the post-colonial world. These five factors have coalesced to create opportunities for military intervention in less developed nations.