Suchergebnisse

This article is divided into four sections. The first discusses Huntington's arguments about the role of the military in developing societies. The second and third sections analyze the shift by the Argentine military from an intermittent to a sustained type of political intervention in public life. The last section draws some theoretical lessons from the analysis of the Argentine experience with military participation in politics. (InWent/DÜI)

Der Verfasser setzt sich einleitend mit Huntingtons Analyse der zivilen Kontrolle des Militärs auseinander. Eine Schwächung politischer Strukturen und eine starke, autonomie Position des Militärs werden als Voraussetzungen des Prätorianismus in der Moderne herausgearbeitet. Vor diesem Hintergrund analysiert der Verfasser die Position des Militärs in Osteuropa nach dem Rückzug der sowjetischen Truppen aus den Nachbarstaaten und der Auflösung des Warschauer Pakts. Der Einfluß des politischen Wandels auf Kohäsion und kollektive Identität des Militärs in Albanien, Bulgarien, der Tschechoslowakei, Ungarn, Polen, Rumänien und Jugoslawien wird untersucht. Der Verfasser zeigt, daß in allen behandelten Staaten Maßnahmen zur subjektiven zivilen Kontrolle des Militärs im Sinne Huntingtons ergriffen wurden. Die Gefahr des Prätorianismus ist daher nicht akut. (BIOst-Wpt)

The successive constitutional crises that confronted the Pakistani courts were not of their own making. But the doctrinally inconsistent, judicially inappropriate, and politically timid responses fashioned by these courts ultimately undermined constitutional governance. When confronted with the question of the validity and scope of extra constitutional power, the courts vacillated between Hans Kelsen's theory of revolutionary validity, Hugo Grotius's theory of implied mandate, and an expansive construction of the doctrine of state necessity. A more principled and realistic response would have been to declare the validity of extra constitutional regimes a nonjusticiable political question. Besides ensuring doctrinal consistency, a refusal to furnish extra constitutional regimes with judicially pronounced validity may well have discouraged praetorian encroachment upon constitutional governance. A consistent refusal to pronounce upon nonjusticiable political questions might have promoted a democratic constitution building process by implicitly reminding the body politic of its primary responsibility to build and preserve constitutional orders. Furthermore, during the periods when these courts had the opportunity to exercise judicial review under a constitution, they failed to enunciate a consistent and coherent standard of review. By misapplying the political question doctrine, the courts implied that democratically elected legislatures possess unfettered legislative power. By refusing to fashion judicial checks against potential tyranny of the majority, the courts acquiesced in the contraction of fundamental rights and the diminution of federalism during the Fourth Republic. This facilitated the demise of the Fourth Republic following yet another military usurpation of power. A better approach would have been for the courts to invalidate any legislation which jeopardized the basic structure and essential features of the constitution.

Although the army of New Spain exhibited few if any signs of praetorianism or militarism prior to the independence wars, 1810-1821, many observers in the decades following national independence described the military as one of the negative impediments to progress in the young Mexican republic. Clearly, the decade of insurgency, guerrilla warfare, and fragmentation of the old polity caused dramatic changes in the attitudes and behavior of army officers. The present article analyzes the impact of the war on the royalist army, which in 1821 largely transformed itself to declare for independence. To develop effective counterinsurgency programs, officers assumed active political and administrative roles. After years of exercising power, they did not wish to return to their barracks.