Theories of military in African politics

Abstract

There is a scholarly position that holds there is no country in the world where the military does not intervene in politics. If politics is understood as authoritative allocation of values, then all participants in the political process intervene in politics at one point or another. The military as part of the polity intervenes in several ways. Relying mainly on secondary data, this chapter revisits the dominant theoretical orientations and interrogates their continued relevance for the explanation of the military in African politics. Our attention is also focused on the most recent coups in Africa, especially in Mali and Burkina Faso, with the intention of determining the applicability of the extant theories in the reasons for military take-over of political power.