Quasi-armies : obstacles to, or vehicle for, state-building in Central Africa

• Main Author: Bachmann, Olaf
• Published: King's College London (University of London) 2013
• Subjects: 355.02
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.628264

The object of inquiry of this thesis is the military as a constitutive component of state institutions in the Central African sub region. Its aim is to identify whether and to what extent the military has been and can be instrumental to the process of state-building and state formation in the region, and whether and under which conditions it is an obstacle to that process. This thesis is built upon two assumptions: the key conceptual differentiation between the state formation process and the state-building project, and the relevance of political culture in explaining military development and the military relationship to the state. A shaping parameter of the analysis is whether, and in which conditions, it is possible to “accelerate” state-building in the context of a given political culture. Lessons for Africa are drawn from historical analogy and the limits of classic civil-military theory in interpreting Africa’s experience analysed on the basis of the example of three states, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda. Each national situation and each period is examined from a dual historical and sociological perspective so as to pin down the articulation between political decisions and cultural constraints, and the positioning of the military at key turns in those countries development. Clarity is cast from this analysis on the degree and characteristics of “quasi-ness” of each state, and correspondingly, the level of “quasi-ness” of its armed forces.