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Within five years, some of the cadets to whom these remarks were addressed helped overthrow Kwame Nkrumah. Despite the warning, 'Politics are not for soldiers', the armed forces in Ghana – as in 14 other African states – assumed full political control. The military thus changed in Africa from relatively insignificant relics of colonial administration into prime arbiters of political disputes – settling arguments, in many instances, by the direct seizure of power. Praetorianism had reached south of the Sahara.

Abstract: An uneasy relationship between military and civilian power hangs like a cloud over the future of democratic reform in Pakistan. Praetorianism has been a deeply-ingrained feature in Pakistani politics since the country's birth, making depoliticization of the military a nettlesome task for any civilian government, particularly given that the military's "prerogatives" comprise the defense sector, internal security, legal system, and even foreign relations and nuclear weapons. With the ever-present threat of terrorism and the public insecurity and unrest terrorist acts provoke, authoritarian backsliding remains a sobering possibility.

Maxwell reviews 'Beyond Praetorianism: The Latin American Military in Transition' edited by Richard L. Millett and Michael Gold-Bliss. A book review is presented of Beyond Praetorianism: The Latin American Military in Transition edited by Richard L. Millet and Michael Gold-Bliss.

Praetorianism has been authoritatively defined as a situation in which 'the military class of a given society exercises independent political power within it by virtue of an actual or threatened use of military force'.1A praetorian state, by elaboration, is one in which the military tends to intervene andpotentiallycould dominate the political system. The political processes of this statefavorthe development of the military as the core group and the growth of its expectations as a ruling class; its political leadership (as distinguished from bureaucratic, administrative and managerial leadership) is chiefly recruited from the military, or from groups sympathetic, or at least not antagonistic, to the military. Constitutional changes are effected and sustained by the militaty, and the army frequently intervenes in the government.2

Militärregierungen in Afrika, noch stark kolonialer Ideologie verhaftet, versuchen bewußt oder unbewußt, den institutionellen Entwicklungsprozeß in ihrem Sinne zu beeinflussen und zu lenken, um dadurch ihre despotische Herrschaft zu festigen. Da die Institutionalisierung einer Politik heute lebenswichtige Vorraussetzung für jede Art von Entwicklung ist, stellt dies den besten Weg zur Machtsicherung dar. Diskussion der wahren Gründe für die meisten militärischen Staatsstreiche. Der Widerstand des Militärs gegenüber sozialem Wandel und Demokratie. Militärherrschaft und die Wiederbelebung des Stammesdenkens. (DÜI-Hlb)