ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1970s, Thai civil-military relations have moved away from military domination. Although the country has been civilian dominated since 1992, the key role of the king indicates a strong strain of neopatrimonialism in Thai political culture. Unlike Venezuela or Thailand, the Slovak military, created virtually from scratch after the breakup of Czechoslovakia, suffers institutional weakness from its lack of historical tradition. The six remaining countries—India, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Pakistan—have pacted civil-military relationships. Brazil has made important progress in consolidating democracy over the past decade. Regional security can be built upon cooperative or competitive interstate relations. If regional peace is built upon the balancing of power, defense expenditures will be higher and the underlying level of tension in the region greater than if peace is built on cooperation. The relationship between the characteristics of civil-military relations and regional security policies is strong but not perfect.
