Civil-Military Relations in the Prevention of Democratic Backsliding

Most civil-military relations scholarship implicitly or explicitly sees the military as a threat to democratic institutions and governments. In recent years, however, there have been several instances in which democratically elected governments tried to use the armed forces for undermining democratic institutions. Hence, military leaders may sometimes have to contest lawful political decisions if these potentially threaten democracy. This challenges fundamental normative assumptions in civil-military relations research. The present article therefore asks: Which analytical tools does civil-military relations scholarship provide for assessing the appropriate role of military leaders in the prevention of democratic backsliding? Should there be general, prescriptive normative theories for military leaders’ appropriate behaviour in contexts of democratic backsliding? The article begins by reviewing civil-military relations scholarship’s perspectives on the appropriate political role of armed forces and discusses how these are challenged by democratic backsliding. Building on previous attempts to conceptualise military dissent and the military’s role in autocratization processes, the article argues that military behaviour in backsliding processes cannot be assessed without taking military role conceptions as explanatory variable for military leaders’ ideas about appropriate behaviour into account. Illustrative examples from the Americas then assess military leaders’ reaction to backsliding attempts and their consequences for democracy and civil-military relations. The findings underline that prescriptive guidance for military disobedience should be treated with caution.