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On Horseback for How Much Longer?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
Extract
It Was In 1962 In The Man on horseback, A Book which has long since become a classic, that S. E. Finer drew attention to a class of country in which the government was repeatedly subject to the interference of its armed forces: the military, he noted ‘as an independent political force, constitutes a distinct and peculiar political phenomenon’. Beginning from the political strengths and weaknesses of the military, his analysis addressed the disposition of the military to intervene in politics and its opportunities for doing so, and he brought out the different forms such intervention could take and the different levels to which it could be pressed. In effect, he also turned on its head a prevailing if tacit assumption. Given their ‘vastly superior organization’ and their arms, it seemed to him that ‘Instead of asking why the military engage in politics, we Ought surely ask why they ever do otherwise’.
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References
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