ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the military as an actor in the processes of democratic consolidation, and on how newer democracies seek to assert and develop civilian control and achieve effectiveness in the security forces' roles and missions. 1 It elaborates on a framework for analysis that I have developed in the study of newer as well as more mature democracies, and illustrates with examples from countries where I and my research team have done field research for more than a decade. There is some useful conceptual literature on the military in democratic consolidation, but little empirical work on how democratic civilian control is in fact implemented. There is even less on what militaries require in order to implement the roles and missions civilian leaders assign them. Consequently, while the early part of this chapter, which focuses on the conceptualization of the military and democratic consolidation, is documented with academic literature, the four specific case studies in the latter part will rely heavily on empirical research carried out by the author and his colleagues. 2
