Previous Military Rule and Democratic Survival

Abstract

Existing scholarship shows that a history of military rule increases the risk of democratic breakdown. However, scholars overlook the fact that military rule takes two distinct forms: collegial and personalist military rule. I argue that the two types of military rule provide different structural settings for post-authoritarian contexts. Collegial military rule hands over more cohesive and hierarchical militaries to their subsequent democracies than personalist military rule. These militaries remain organized, politicized, and powerful in emerging democracies, which increases the risk of military intervention and coups. I hypothesize that collegial military rule poses a greater threat to the survival of the ensuing democracies than personalist military rule. Empirical analysis reveals that democracies after collegial military rule are more likely to collapse than other democracies, including those emerging from personalist military rule. This shows that the previous finding on the detrimental effect of military rule is largely driven by collegial military rule.