Using Israel as a case study, this article endeavors to account for the intriguing sociopolitical phenomenon that military coups and military regimes are thwarted not because of the resilience of democratic institutions and the absence of war but because the society is militaristic and is in a protracted state of war. This argument, hypothesizing an inverse relationship between militarism and praetorianism, is based on an examination of Israel from its establishment until the present day, its depiction as a nation-in-arms, and its comparison with other nations-in-arms that have also experienced nonpraetorian militarism.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abrahmsson, Benegt . (1972). Military professionalization and political power. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
2.
Albright, David E. (1980). A comparative conceptualization of civil-military relations. World Politics, 22, 553-576.
3.
Ambler, John Steward . (1966). The French army in politics 1945-1962. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
4.
Andreski, Stanislav . (1980). On the peaceful disposition of military dictatorships. Journal of Strategic Studies, 3(3), 3-10.
5.
Aronoff, Myron J. (1993). The origins of Israeli political culture. In E. Sprinzak & L. Diamond (Eds.), Israeli democracy under stress (pp. 47-65). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
6.
Azarya, Victor , & Kimmerling, Baruch. (1980). New immigrants in the Israeli armed forces. Armed Forces and Society, 6(3), 22-41.
7.
Barzilai, Gad . (1992). A democracy in wartime: Conflict and consensus in Israel. Tel-Aviv: Hapoalim.
8.
Bar-On, Mordechai . (1992). The gates of Gaza. Tel-Aviv: Am-Oved.
9.
Ben-Eliezer, Uri . (1993). The meaning of political participation in a nonliberal democracy. Comparative Politics, 25, 397-412.
10.
Ben-Eliezer, Uri . (1995a). A nation-in-arms: State, nation and militarism in Israel's first years. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37, 264-285.
11.
Ben-Eliezer, Uri . (1995b). The origins of Israeli militarism, 1936-1956. Tel-Aviv: Dvir.
12.
Ben-Gurion, David . (1950). When Israel fights. Tel-Aviv: Mapai.
13.
Ben-Meir, Yehuda . (1995). Civil-military relations in Israel. New York: Columbia University Press.
14.
Berghahn, Volker R. (1981). Militarism: The history of an international debate, 1861-1979. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
15.
Bredin, Jean Denis . (1983). L'Affaire. Paris: Librairie Plon.
16.
Burk, James . (1993). Morris Janowitz and the origins of sociological research on armed forces and society. Armed Forces and Society, 19, 167-185.
17.
Challener, Richard . (1965). The French idea of the nation-in-arms—1866-1939. New York: Russell & Russell.
18.
Clausewitz, Karl Von . (1982). On war. London: Penguin.
19.
Cohen, Stuart A. (1995). The Israel Defense Force (IDF): From a “people army” to a “professional military”—Causes and implications. Armed Forces and Society, 21, 237-254.
20.
Cook, Theodor F. (1978). The Japanese reserve experience: From nation-in-arms to baseline defense. In L. A. Zurcher & G. Harries-Jenkins (Eds.), Supplementary military forces. London: Sage.
21.
De La Gorce, Paul-Marie . (1963). The French army. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
22.
Desch, Michael C. (1993). Why the Soviet military supported Gorbachev but why the Russian military might only support Yeltsin for a price. Journal of Strategic Studies, 16, 455-489.
23.
Edmonds, Martin . (1988). Armed services and society. San Francisco: Westview.
24.
Eley, Geoff . (1986). Army, state and civil society: Revisiting the problem of German militarism. In G. Eley (Ed.), From unification to Nazism (pp. 85-109). Boston: Allen & Unwin.
25.
Finer, S. E. (1962). The man on horseback. London: Pall Mall.
26.
Finer, S. E. (1982a). The man on horseback [Introduction to the Hebrew edition]. Tel-Aviv: Ministry of Defence.
27.
Finer, S. E. (1982b). The morphology of military regimes. In R. Kolkowicz & A. Korbonski (Eds.), Soliders, peasants and bureaucrats (pp. 281-304). London: Allen & Unwin.
28.
Gal, Reuven . (1979). A portrait of the Israeli soldier. New York: Greenwood.
29.
Gelber, Yoav . (1986). Why the Palmach was disbanded. Tel-Aviv: Shoken.
30.
Giddens, Anthony . (1985). The nation-state and violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.
31.
Gillis, John R. (1989). The militarization of the western world. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
32.
Girardet, Raoul . (1953). La societe militaire francaise de 1815 a 1939. Paris: Plon.
33.
Girardet, Raoul . (1962). Civil and military power in the Fourth Republic. In S. Huntington (Ed.), Changing patterns of military politics. New York: Free Press.
34.
Glick, Edward . (1974). Do the generals run Israel?Present Tense, p. 3.
35.
Golani, Moti . (1994). Gaza raid and the Israeli policy of retaliation during the fifties. Tel-Aviv: Ministry of Defence.
36.
Halpern, Ben . (1962). The role of the military in Israel. In J. Johnson (Ed.), The role of the military in underdeveloped countries (pp. 317-357). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
37.
Hayes, Carlton J. H. (1931). Jacobin nationalism. In C.J.H. Hayes (Ed.), The historical evolution of modern nationalism. New York: Russell & Russell.
38.
Hofnung, Menachem . (1991). Israel—Security needs vs. the rule of law. Jerusalem: Nevo.
39.
Holloway, David . (1982). War, militarism and the Soviet state. In E.P. Thompson & D. Smith (Eds.), Protest and survive. London: Verso.
40.
Horowitz, Dan . (1977). Is Israel a garrison state?Jerusalem Quarterly, 4, 58-65.
41.
Horowitz, Dan . (1982). The Israeli defense forces: A civilianized military in a partially militarized society. In R. Kolkowicz & A. Korbonski (Eds.), Soldiers, peasants and bureaucrats (pp. 77-106). London: Allen & Unwin.
42.
Horowitz, Dan , & Kimmerling, Baruch. (1974). Some social implications of military service and the reserve system in Israel. Archieve European Sociologie, 15, 262-276.
43.
Horowitz, Dan , & Lissak, Moshe. (1989). Out of utopia. Albany: SUNY Press.
44.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1957). The soldier and the state. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
45.
Janowitz, Morris . (1957). Military elites and the study of war. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1, 9-18.
46.
Janowitz, Morris . (1960). The professional soldier. New York: Free Press.
47.
Kimmerling, Baruch . (1983). Making conflict a routine: Cumulative effects on the Arab-Jewish conflict upon Israeli society. Journal of Strategic Studies, 6(3), 13-45.
48.
Kimmerling, Baruch . (1985). The interrupted system, Israeli civilians in war and routine time. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
49.
Kimmerling, Baruch . (1993). Patterns of militarism in Israel. Archieve European Sociologie, 34, 196-223.
50.
Kitchen, Martin . (1968). The German officer corps, 1890-1914. Oxford: Clarendon.
51.
Lasswell, Harold . (1941). The garrison state. American Journal of Sociology, 46, 455-468.
52.
Lasswell, Harold . (1962). The garrison state hypothesis today. In S. P. Huntington (Ed.), Changing patterns of military politics. New York: Free Press.
53.
Lijphart, Arend . (1971). Comparative politics and the comparative method. American Political Science Review, 65, 682-693.
54.
Lissak, Moshe . (1971). The Israel defence forces as an agent of socialization and education. In M. R. Van Gils (Ed.), The perceived role of the military (pp. 325-339). Roterdam: Roterdam University Press.
55.
Lissak, Moshe . (1995). The civilian components of Israel's Security Doctrine: The evolution of civil-military relations in the first decade. In S. I. Toren & N. Lucas (Eds.), Israel: The first decade of independence (pp. 575-591). New York: SUNY Press.
56.
Looney, Robert E. (1990). Militarization, military regimes, and the general quality of life in the Third World. Armed Forces and Society, 17(1), 127-139.
57.
Lustick, Ian . (1993). Unsettled states, disputed lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
58.
Luttwak, Edward , & Horowitz, Dan. (1975). The Israeli army. London: Allen Lane.
59.
Maniruzzman, Talukder . (1987). Military withdrawal from politics. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
60.
Mann, Michael . (1988). The roots and contradictions of modern militarism. In M. Mann (Ed.), States, war and capitalism (pp. 166-187). New York: Basil Blackwell.
61.
Mannheim, Karl . (1952). Essays on the sociology of knowledge. London: Routlege & Kegan Paul.
62.
Menard, Orville D. (1967). The army and the Fifth Republic. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
63.
Mintz, Alex . (1985). Military industrial linkages in Israel. Armed Forces and Society, 12(1), 9-27.
Nakamura, Yshihida , & Tobe, Ryoichi. (1988). The imperial Japanese army and politics. Armed Forces and Society, 14, 511-525.
66.
Nordlinger, Eric . (1977). Soldiers in politics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
67.
Peri, Yoram . (1981). Political military partnership in Israel. International Political Science Review, 2, 303-315.
68.
Peri, Yoram . (1983). Between battles and ballots, Israeli military in politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
69.
Perlmutter, Amos . (1969). Military and politics in Israel: Nation building and role expansion. New York: Praeger.
70.
Perlmutter, Amos . (1977). The military and politics in modern times. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
71.
Porch, Douglas . (1981). The march to the Marne, the French army 1871-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
72.
Rabin, Itzhak . (1979). Service diary. Tel-Aviv: Maariv Library.
73.
Ralston, David B. (1967). The army of the republic: The place of the military in the political evolution of France, 1871-1914. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
74.
Rappoport, David C. (1982). The praetorian army: Insecurity, venality and impotence. In R. Kolkowicz & A. Korbonski (Eds.), Soldiers, peasants and bureaucrats (pp. 252-280). London: Allen & Unwin.
75.
Ross, Andrew . (1987). Dimensions of militarization in the Third World. Armed Forces and Society, 13, 561-578.
76.
Schiff, Rebecca . (1992). Civil-military relations reconsidered: Israel as an “uncivil” state. Security Studies, 1, 636-658.
77.
Schiff, Zeev , & Yaari, Ehud. (1984). Israel's Lebanon War. New York: Simon & Schuster.
78.
Shapira, Anita . (1985). The army controversy, 1948. Tel-Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad.
79.
Shaw, Martin . (1989). War and the nation-state in social theory. In D. Held & J. B. Thompson (Eds.), Social theory of modern societies (pp. 129-146). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
80.
Shaw, Martin . (1991). Post-military society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
81.
Shohat, Ella . (1987). Israeli cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press.
82.
Silver, Allan . (1994). Democratic citizenship and high military strategy: The inheritance, decay, and reshaping of political culture. Research on Democracy and Society, 2, 317-349.
83.
Skjelsbaek, Kjell . (1980). Militarism, its dimensions and corollaries: An attempt to conceptual clarification. In A. Edie & M. Thee (Eds.), Problems of contemporary militarism (pp. 77-105). New York: St. Martin's.
84.
Sprinzak, Ehud . (1989). The emergence of the Israeli radical Right. Comparative Politics, 21, 171-192.
85.
Sunoo, Hakwon H. (1975). Japanese militarism, past and present. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
86.
Tilly, Charles . (1988). War-making and state making as organized crime. In P. B. Evanset al. (Eds.), Bringing the state back in (pp. 169-186). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
87.
Vagts, Alfred . (1959). A history of militarism. New York: Meridian Books.
88.
Valenzuela, Arturo . (1985). A note on the military and social science theory. Third World Quarterly, 7(1), 132-143.
89.
Welch, Claude E. (1985). Civil-military relations: Perspectives from the Third World. Armed Forces and Society, 11, 183-198.
90.
Welch, Claude E. , & Smith, Arthur K. (1974). Military role and rule. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury.
91.
Willems, Emilio . (1986). A way of life and death: Three centuries of Prussian-German militarism. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
92.
Yaniv, Avner . (1987). Dilemmas of security: Politics, strategy and the Israeli experience in Lebanon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
93.
Zagorski, Paul W. (1988). Civil-military relations and Argentine democracy. Armed Forces and Society, 14, 407-432.
94.
Zhong, Yang . (1992). The transformation of the Soviet military and the August coup. Armed Forces and Society, 19(1), 47-70.
