Securing the Space for Political Transition: The Evolution of Civil-Military Relations in Burundi
McClintock, Elizabeth.
2016
-
Abstract: This dissertation addresses the question, why, after forty years of
military dictatorship, has the Burundian Army remained in its barracks and off the
political stage despite facing conditions that mirror historical events and which, in an
earlier time, would have prompted the military's swift and violent intervention in
politics. Traditional civil-military relations scholarship ... read moresuggests that once civilian
supremacy has been established over the military, the military should then withdraw from
politics. However, the scholarship does not offer a sufficient explanation of how the
process of establishing civilian supremacy occurs. This study tests the hypothesis that in
order to understand how civilian supremacy in civil-military relations is achieved, these
relations must be examined over time and in the context of a country's political culture -
in other words, the ideology, formal and informal rules that inform a people's shared
understanding (conscious and unconscious) of how politics should function and which give
meaning to and ultimately guide their actions. This study examines the case of Burundi's
military, developed from primary and secondary sources. Identifying the three principal
threads of Burundi's political culture - the sources of regime legitimacy, the management
of political conflict, and the role of clientelism and the state - the study uses these
threads to trace Burundi's civil-military relations from the pre-colonial era through 2014
in order to explain the shift in the army's behavior since 2003. This study finds that,
taken alone, civil-military relations theory cannot adequately predict the military's
behavior. Instead, this dissertation finds that only by first understanding how political
culture influences and shapes concepts such as what makes a government "legitimate" or an
army "professional" will the civil-military relations scholarship have relevance. Second,
this study finds that civil-military relations theories have greater explanatory value when
they are combined. Specifically, norm inculcation is both supported and furthered by
professionalization; a drop in internal support for military intervention occurs alongside
the increasing legitimacy of government. The findings in this research study offer
important insights into how a path toward civilian supremacy is initiated and can be
sustained, potentially informing security sector reform efforts in other post-conflict
contexts.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2016.
Submitted to the Dept. of Diplomacy, History, and Politics.
Advisors: Peter Uvin, and Eileen Babbitt.
Committee: Antonia Chayes.
Keywords: International relations, Military studies, and African studies.read less - ID:
- vm40z374r
- Component ID:
- tufts:21256
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
