The Armed Bureaucrats
Author: Edward Feit
Publisher:
Published: 1972
Total Pages: 212
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Dr. Feit begins his book by presenting his chief theoretical contribution--armies, when they become modernized and bureaucratized--can come to have the same concerns for order and efficiency as do civilian administrators. The author then illustrates how military regimes exhibit cyclical tendencies: first, military officers occupy principal offices in the state, followed by a period when civilians play an increasingly important role as technocrats and administrators. This phase of "cohesion without consensus" is followed by a state of political stasis, founded on mutual acceptance of the new rulers by competing and often antagonistic social groups that nevertheless derive, or hope to derive, some benefit from the regime. But military governments are ultimately wrecked by the social forces that made them necessary, and for the same reason: an inability to mediate among clashing, hostile social groupings and to build real coalition among them. These ideas are refined with the aid of six case studies of military regimes of significant duration, in different time periods, and in different cultures. In its theorizing and its search for generalizable propositions, the book breaks new ground and should lead to additional research, using comparative data, on both the bureaucratization of armies and the performance of military governments.
