Common use of Dissertation Outline Clause in Contracts

Dissertation Outline. Building on the concepts outlined in the present chapter, chapter two will plant the context for the later analysis of the African military and its relationship to the state. Part of this context lies in the benchmarks set by the experience of longer existing states on other continents. For analytical purposes, and at the risk of simplifying reality somewhat, three scenarios of state formation and state-building can be identified: the long process of state creation in the more ancient polities on other continents, the late 19th early 20th century experiences of authoritarian state-building, and post-World War II democratic state-building. Those three scenarios will be scrutinised for clues about two main aspects: firstly, the relationship between stages of state formation and the evolution of political cultures; secondly, the role and place of the military in connection to both elements. Particularly important questions are whether, and in which conditions, it is possible to ‘accelerate’ the process of state-building or state transformation on the basis of a political culture which is obviously not in tune with the institutional model to which it aspired. In this, Japan, Germany and Turkey yield profound lessons for Africa. Another core aim is to identify the conditions in which the military, as part of a culturally-marked social and political body, is able to distance itself from the latter to act primarily according to its institutional role in a state-strengthening fashion. These are the conditions that enable us to differentiate those cases where the military is an instrument for state-building from those where it is an obstacle thereto. On the basis of these historically-driven parameters, the creation and development process of African states and their armies is sketched out to highlight a number of crucial differences from existing European and Asian models. I argue that a local political culture characterised by patronage systems and closed or limited access orders, and reinforced by a strong impact of mysticism, is a central explanatory factor for those differences. Taking into account the historical context of state creation in Africa, military immersion in traditional political cultures, and particular aspects of states’ policies regarding the role of the military in post-colonial national development, Chapter 2 concludes with a set of key questions that serve as a roadmap with which to examine the subsequent case studies with an overarching concern: to identify whether and how, and explain why the military has, or has not, contributed to the consolidation of a Weberian and/or democratic state in a selection of Central African states. In this context it is possible to demonstrate that classic Huntingtonian civil-military theory is unsuitable to Central African conditions. The three case studies in Chapters 3-5, on Cameroon, the Congo and Rwanda, constitute the core of the empirical research. As they are geared toward answering the same question, they share a common thread and have a largely similar structure, although slight variations have been necessary to take account of different realities, in particular in post-Cold War developments. Each national situation and each period is examined from a dual historical and sociological perspective so as to pin down the articulation between political decisions and cultural constraints and also the positioning/role of the military at key turns in those countries’ development. Differences and communalities in the shape of the military and its relationship to the state/political authority are highlighted in order to identify later in the work (Chapter 6) the parameters of those differences. In terms of its logic, each chapter starts with a description of the traditional military heritages of pre-colonial and colonial times as key determinants of the shape of the respective national military after independence. Post-independence years are then analysed according to a country-specific periodicity, in order to take into account differences in national trajectories, however, with the overarching concern of pinpointing the role/attitude/task of the military at key junctures of state-strengthening/state- weakening initiatives. Whilst the three countries show a similar pattern of instrumentalisation of military by the political power holders in the 30 years following independence, it is possible to observe sharp differentiation as of 1990: whereas Cameroon continued more or less on the same course, the collapse of the Mobutu regime in the mid-1990s revealed the weakness of the state-building process in the Congo, and its relapse into a form of state and military that is more akin to the ‘natural/Tillian’ than to the Weberian model; Rwanda, for its part, after the cataclysmic events of the genocide, began an entirely new state-building phase, in which the military took a leading role. Chapter 6 exploits the results of the empirical case studies in order to check and refine the initial assumptions. A clarification arises from this analysis as regards the degree and characteristics of ‘quasi-ness’ of each state and, correspondingly, the level of ‘quasi-ness’ of its armed forces. Similarities and differences across cases are identified and related to interlinked historical and cultural factors, as Central African states are at various stages of transition from Tillian to Weberian to democratic states and from closed to open societies. On this basis, tentative conclusions suggest that the military in the sub- region can, in exceptional circumstances, be a vehicle for the advancement of state-building. As was the case in Turkey and Japan, and as the study of Rwanda demonstrates, these exceptional circumstances reside in the presence of a strongly-motivated political leadership that is determined to make state-building its absolute priority and has succeeded in mobilising the support of the military to that end. In both other cases, as the bearers of traditional political cultures sustaining institutional fragmentation, with higher ranks being part of a ruling elite that has little interest in political change, the military can only be an obstacle to state-building.