Political obligation and military rule

Philosophical Forum

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 161-193

  Taiwo, Olufemi ^a  

^a LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO   (United States)

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EID: 0006710616     PISSN: 0031806X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. For a compendious treatment of all the grounds of obligation just listed, see Alan J. Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)
2. Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments, p. 92
3. See Eric A. Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977), p. 3
4. This paragraph is a modification of the distinction made by Claude E. Welch, Jr. and Arthur K. Smith, Military Role and Rule (North Scituate, Ma.: Duxbury Press, 1974), p. x
5. Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments, p. 3
6. Nordlinger, p. 3
7. Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligation, p. 7
8. On the idea of obligation offering a good reason for acting, see the discussion by Harry Beran, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 14ff
9. For an illuminating discussion of the problem posed to legal systems and its continuity in the aftermath of usurpations in English legal history see, J. M. Finnis, "Revolutions and Continuity of Law," in A. W. B. Simpson, ed., Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, Second Series (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), pp. 46-48
10. Consider the following from Michael Walzer: "The state itself can sometimes be imagined as an ideal or potential community, obligating its members to oppose those authorities who act legally but (it is thought) immorally in its name. Thus those men who disobey the commands of a collaborationist government after military defeat, or of a satellite government after some less formal capitulation, often claim that their state has been betrayed and that they are obligated by their previous membership and driven by their patriotism to resistance." "The Obligation to Disobey," in Edward Kent, ed., Revolution and the Rule of Law (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), p. 116
11. There were two unsuccessful attempts by Colonel Aydemir in 1962 and 1963. See Bener Karakartal, "Turkey: The Army as Guardian of the Political Order," The Political Dilemmas of Military Regimes, Christopher Clapham and George Philip, eds., (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 46. There was also an unsuccessful attempt in Spain in 1982
12. For a fuller discussion of the attributes of the military see, S. E. Finer, The Man on Horseback (London and Dunmow: Pall Mall Press, 1962), chapter 2
13. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (London: Everyman, 1950), Book 1, chapter 3
14. For a similar view see Finer, The Man on Horseback, p. 17
15. The following is a fairly representative sample. Welch, Jr. and Smith, Military Role and Rule, chapter 3
16. Clapham and Philip, eds., The Political Dilemmas of Military Regimes, Introduction
17. The regime was itself pushed out of power by a guerilla insurgency in 1991
18. William L. McBride "The Acceptance of a Legal System," The Monist, 49, 3, (1965), pp. 377-396. He used the idea in connection with a legal system. I have substituted "political system" for all occurrences of "legal system" for my purposes
19. See Michael Oakeshott, "Political Education," Politics, Philosophy and Society, Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman, eds., (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957)
20. see also Beran, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation, pp. 146-147
21. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), #385, p. 210
22. Since then the country has had five successful and three unsuccessful coups. In its thirty-four years of existence as an independent state, Nigeria has been governed by the military for twenty-two of those years. Military rule has ceased to be an interregnum; it has become a coregnum, to borrow the apt description of the Honourable Justice Kayode Eso. See Kayode Eso, 'The Court as Guardian of the Constitution', Paper presented at the All Nigeria Judges' Conference, Abuja, Nigeria, 1988, (Lagos: Federal Government Printer). If the evidence in the literature on the sociology of the military and on military intervention in politics in various countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa is proof, much of what I describe in the following paragraphs can be found elsewhere with necessary allowances made for the historical specificity of each country
23. For details see, Nordlinger, Soliders in Politics: Military Coups and Governments, chapter 3
24. Robin Luckham, The Nigerian Military (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), Part One
25. For a description of the enthusiasm which greeted the coup which ousted the elected regime of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in December 1983 see, Toyin Falola and Julius Ihonvbere, The Rise and Fall of Nigeria's Second Republic, (London: Zed Press, 1984)
26. Ladipo Adamolekun, The Demise of Nigeria's Second Republic, (Lagos: Macmillan, 1984)
27. See John Ladd, 'Legal and Moral Obligation,' in J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds., Political and Legal Obligation (New York: Atherton, 1970)
28. Karakartal, "Turkey: The Army as Guardian of Political Order," p. 49
29. For a discussion of various reasons for action see Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms (London: Hutchinson, 1975), pp. 27ff