Reconceptualising Civil-Military Relations in Africa

Relations between African militaries, civilian authority and the public have undergone significant transformation over the past decades. Much of previous scholarship on civil-military relations tended to approach the subject through the idiom of the coup. Analysts in the 1960s initially presented the military in positive terms as a modernising agent, a representation cast aside in the throes of coups d’état, instability and rights violations at the behest of armed forces. This article revisits the conceptual and theoretical terrain in light of recent socio-political changes and in the wake of the peak of military coups on the continent. In reconceptualising civil-military relations, this article proposes a typology that combines the nature of modal relations with civilian authority and relations with the civilian public. The article analyses the different models of relations, tracing the domestic reconfigurations and external influences that structure news ways of civil-military engagement.