Book Launch: Between Military Rule and Democracy

At a seminar on 11 May 2017, Dr Yaprak Gürsoy, Academic Visitor at SEESOX and Associate Professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul, presented her forthcoming book ‘Between Military Rule and Democracy: Regime Consolidation in Greece, Turkey, and Beyond’ (2017, University of Michigan Press). Chaired by Othon Anastasakis (St Antony’s College, Oxford) Laurence Whitehead (Nuffield College, Oxford) and Stathis Kalyvas (Yale University) were the discussants.

As Gürsoy explained, the book deals with the origins of democratic and authoritarian regimes in countries in which the military is a significant political actor. Treating the military as an actor in its own right, and with a distinct corporate interest, the book looks at the circumstances of military intervention in the democratic procedure through, for example, short-lived coups d’états, the support or establishment of longer term authoritarian regimes, or by accepting the authority of democratically elected civilians. Building on Robert Dahl’s concept of polyarchy (1971), and particularly the distinction between the costs of toleration and the costs of suppression, Gürsoy argues that elite actors such as military officers support democracy, authoritarianism, or short-lived coups depending to a large degree on their perception of threats with respect to their interests. The power of the elites relative to the opposition, determined partly by the coalitions they establish with each other, affects the success of military interventions and the consolidation of regimes. To substantiate these findings, Gürsoy performs both within-case and cross-case comparisons, looking at diverse coups that happened in Turkey and Greece over the past decades. Gürsoy suggested that these two neighbouring countries, both members of the NATO alliance, may be seen as ‘natural laboratories’. Between the 1920s and the end of the 1990s, these cases had no fewer than four episodes of authoritarian regimes, six periods of democratic rule, and at least ten short-lived military coups with varying degrees of success. Archival research, secondary literature, and 150 interviews with decision makers in Greece and Turkey, support the conclusions of the book, which also includes chapters on Thailand and Egypt as shadow cases as well as contemporary analyses of the impact of the Eurozone crisis for Greece, together with the most recent coup attempt in Turkey, on the consolidation of democracy in the two countries.

In their comments, both discussants praised the contribution made by the book. Stathis Kalyvas specifically commended the book’s effort to combine structuralist explanations on the one hand, and agency-based approaches on the other, in explaining the role of the military in democratic transitions. He furthermore emphasised the importance of the Greek-Turkey comparison as these two countries form part of the same matrix with frequent interactions. Finally, he complimented the book’s long-term perspective, going back almost to the beginning of the twentieth century and including some lesser-known coups. In his comments, Laurence Whitehead emphasised the book’s contribution in taking the subject of civilian-military relations forward through its long-term perspective and the paired comparison. He also applauded the effort to place the military in a wider political context and proving the model’s broader applicability by including the shadow cases.

Adis Merdzanovic, St Antony’s College

Click here for the seminar podcast and here to order the book