Short Abstract

Beyond coups, how do African armed forces shape states and political power? This panel compares historical legacies, military autonomy, civil-military networks, legitimacy, political intervention, and non-intervention across African countries, societies, and political regimes.

Long Abstract

Armed forces have played diverse and changing roles in the construction of African states. While coups remain the most visible expression of military involvement in politics, focusing exclusively on them obscures other forms of power: informal influence, political arbitration, alliances with civilian elites, institutional autonomy and, importantly, military non-intervention.

This panel examines civil-military relations through multiple African prisms. Rather than treating “the military” as a homogeneous actor or assuming a single African trajectory, it asks how armed forces have contributed to building, transforming, protecting, contesting or weakening state institutions. Under what conditions does military autonomy translate into political intervention? Why do armed forces intervene directly at some moments, exercise influence without formally taking power at others, and remain politically neutral in still others?

We invite contributions exploring how colonial and liberation-war legacies, generational change, political regimes, institutional and material interests, civil-military networks, social legitimacy, impunity and international security-sector interventions shape these different trajectories. Particular attention is encouraged to African perspectives and to the ways military actors themselves understand their role in the state and society. Any insights into the resilience of this behaviour over the 60–50 years since independence would be welcome

The panel welcomes comparative and single-country studies from across Africa and historical, political, sociological and interdisciplinary approaches. By comparing countries, periods and modalities of military power, it seeks to move beyond the binary opposition between military rule and civilian government towards a differentiated understanding of armed forces as actors in African state-building.

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