ABSTRACT
While civil-military relations theory is instrumental to understanding the institutional lay of the land, it has inherent shortcomings. It overlooks dynamic interactions between political, military and social sectors of the society. It is also does not weigh in public sentiment; it is so preoccupied with preventing coups that it discounts situations where the military is so popular that a takeover is no longer necessary or even a viable option. This chapter makes a case for ‘indirect hegemony’ for examining civil-military relations. It will build upon certain longstanding beliefs and assumptions held by the field. In the chapters that follow this indirect hegemony will then be used to argue that when hegemony is culturally and symbolically reinforced, it endures longer.
