A stratocracy is a form of government headed by military chiefs.
Etymology
The word "stratocracy" comes .
Description of stratocracy
The word stratocracy first appeared in 1652 from the political theorist
Robert Filmer, being preceded in 1649 by stratokratia used by Claudius Salmasius in reference to the newly declared Commonwealth of England.
and Daniel Gleason describe a stratocracy as one where citizens with mandatory or voluntary military service, or veterans who have been honorably discharged, have the right to elect or govern. The military's administrative,
judiciary, and/or
legislature powers are supported by law, the constitution, and the society. It does not necessarily need to be
autocracy or
Oligarchy by nature in order to preserve its right to rule. The political scientist
Samuel Finer distinguished between stratocracies, where the army takes decisions and rules directly, and military regimes or dictatorships, where the army does not rule itself but instead is tasked with the primary responsibility of enforcing and defending the rule of civil leaders who set the policies of the state and control the activities of the military. Peter Lyon wrote that through history stratocracies have been relatively rare, and that in the latter half of the twentieth century there has been a noticeable increase in the number of stratocratic states due to the "rapid collapse of the West European
Thalassocracy".
Notable examples of stratocracies
Historical stratocracies
Sparta
The Diarchy of
Sparta was a stratocratic kingdom.
From a young age, male
Spartans were put through the
agoge, necessary for full-citizenship, which was a rigorous education and training program to prepare them to be warriors.
describes the kingship of Sparta as "a kind of unlimited and perpetual generalship" (Pol. iii. 1285a), while
Isocrates refers to the Spartans as "subject to an
oligarchy at home, to a kingship on campaign" (iii. 24).
Rome
One of the most notable and long-lived examples of a stratocratic state is
Ancient Rome, though the stratocratic system developed over time.
Following the deposition of the last
Roman Kingdom Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, Rome became an
Roman Republic.
However, with the gradual expansion of the empire and conflicts with its rival
Ancient Carthage, culminating in the
Punic Wars, the Roman political and military system experienced drastic changes.
Following the so-called "
Marian reforms", de facto political power became concentrated under military leadership, as the loyalty of the legionaries shifted from the Senate to its generals.
Under the First Triumvirate
Goryeo
From 1170 to 1270, the kingdom of
Goryeo was under effective military rule, with puppet kings on the throne serving mainly as figureheads.
The majority of this period was spent under the rule of the Choe family, who set up a parallel system of private administrative systems from their military forces.
Cossacks
Cossacks were predominantly East Slavic people who became known as members of democratic, semi-military and semi-naval communities, predominantly located in
Ukraine and in
Southern Russia.
They inhabited sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower
Dnieper,
Don,
Terek River, and
Ural River river basins, and played an important role in the historical and cultural development of both
Russia and Ukraine.
The
Zaporozhian Sich was a Cossack semi-autonomous polity and
proto-state that existed between the 16th and 18th centuries, and existed as an independent stratocratic state as the Cossack Hetmanate for over a hundred years.
Military frontier of the Habsburg monarchy
The Military Frontier was a
marches of the Habsburg monarchy (which became the
Austrian Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
[ (Wikisource)] The military frontier acted as the
cordon sanitaire against incursions from the
Ottoman Empire. Located in the southern part of Hungarian crown land, the frontier was separated from local jurisdiction and was under direct Viennese central military administration from the 1500s to 1872. Unlike the rest of the Catholic dominated territory of the empire, the frontier area had relatively freer religious laws in order to attract settlements into the area.
Modern stratocracies
The closest modern equivalent to a stratocracy, the State Peace and Development Council of
Burma (Burma), which ruled from 1997 to 2011,
arguably differed from most other military dictatorships in that it completely abolished the civilian constitution and legislature.
A new constitution that came into effect in 2010 cemented the
Tatmadaw's hold on power through mechanisms such as reserving 25% of the seats in the legislature for military personnel.
The civilian constitutional government was dissolved again in the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, with power being transferred back to the Tatmadaw through the State Administration Council.
The United Kingdom overseas territory, the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia on the island of Cyprus, provides another example of a stratocracy: British Forces Cyprus governs the territory, with Air vice-marshal Peter J. M. Squires serving as administrator from 2022.
States argued to be stratocratic
United States
The political scientist
Harold Lasswell wrote in 1941 of his concerns that the world was moving towards "a world of 'garrison states with the United States of America being one of the countries moving in that direction. This was supported by the historian Richard Kohn in 1975 commenting on the US's creation of a military state during its early independence, and by the political scientist Samuel Fitch in 1985. The historian
Eric Hobsbawm has used the existence and power of the military-industrial complex in the US as evidence of it being a stratocratic state. The expansion and prioritisation of the military during the administrations of Reagan and H. W. Bush have also been described as signs of stratocracy in the US. The
futurism Paul Saffo and the researcher Robert Marzec
have argued that the post 9/11 projection of the United States was trending towards stratocracy.
USSR
The philosopher and economist Cornelius Castoriadis wrote in his 1980 text,
Facing the War, that Russia had become the primary world military power. To sustain this, in the context of the visible economic inferiority of the
Soviet Union in the civilian sector, he proposed that the society may no longer be dominated by the
one-party state bureaucracy of the Communist Party but by a "stratocracy",
describing it as a separate and dominant military sector with expansionist designs on the world.
He further argued that this meant there was no internal class dynamic that could lead to social revolution within Russian society and that change could only occur through foreign intervention. Historian Richard I. Frank agreed highlighting similarities in the development of the administrative organs and mechanisms between the USSR and Rome in late antiquity.
With political scientist
Timothy Luke stating that under the secretaryship of Mikhail Gorbachev the USSR was moving towards a stratocratic state.
African states
Various countries in post-colonial
Africa have been described as stratocracies.
[; ; ; ] The Republic of Egypt under the leadership of Nasser was described by the political theorist P. J. Vatikiotis as a stratocratic state.
[; ; ; ] The recent Egyptian governments since the
Arab Spring,
including that of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, have also been called stratocratic.
David George commented in a 1988 paper that the military dictatorship of
Idi Amin in
Uganda and the
Apartheid in
South Africa should be considered stratocracies. Various previous Nigerian governments have been described as stratocratic in research, including the government under Olusegun Obasanjo, and the Armed Forces Ruling Council led by Ibrahim Babangida.
[; ; ; ] Under the 1978 constitution of
Eswatini Sobhuza II appointed the Swazi army commander as the country's prime minister, and the second-in-command of the army as the head of the civil service board. This fusing of military and civil power continued in subsequent appointments, with many of the appointees viewing their civil roles as secondary to their military positions.
under
Jerry Rawlings has also been described as being stratocratic in nature.
term of barracks socialism was retermed by the political scientist Michel Martin in their description of socialist stratocracies in the
Middle East,
Latin America, and
Africa, including specifically the People's Republic of Benin.
Martin also believes the
praetorianism of francophone African republics can be called stratocratic, including the Côte d'Ivoire and the Central African Republic.
Other
The French historian François Raguenet wrote in 1691 of the stratocracy of
Oliver Cromwell in the
The Protectorate, and commented that he believed William III of England was seeking to revive the stratocracy in England.
The military writer Georg Henirich von Berenhorst wrote in hindsight that ever since the reign of the soldier king, Prussia always remained "not a country with an army, but an army with a country" (a quote often misattributed to Voltaire and Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau).
Historian Christina Welsch argues that Company rule in India can be understood as stratocratic, highlighting the growing power of the company armies leading up to the 1809 Madras mutiny which saw as its consequence an entrenching of military officials in Company government positions. In response to the mutiny and its consequences civil officials referred to the increased power of the military in government matters as "in effect a Stratocracy (the worst of all Governments)".
British commentators such as Richard Francis Burton described the pre-Tanzimat Ottoman Empire as a stratocratic state.
The Warlord Era of China is viewed as period of stratocratic struggles with the researcher Peng Xiuliang pointing to the actions and policies of Wang Shizhen, a general and politician of the Republic of China, as an example of the stratocratic forces within the Chinese government of the time.
Occupied Poland in World War I was put under the General-Militärgouvernementen (general military governments) of Germany and Austria-Hungary. This government was a stratocratic system where the military was responsible for the political administration of Poland.
Various of Central and South America have also been described as stratocracies.
Political scientist Samuel Finer argued that of the military regimes that existed in 1980, 16 could be considered to be stratocracies. These were Algeria under Chadli Bendjedid, Argentina, People's Republic of Benin, Burundi under Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, Chile, People's Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Derg, Libya, Mali under Moussa Traoré, Mauritania, Niger under Seyni Kountché, Rwanda under Juvénal Habyarimana, Somalia under Siad Barre, Uruguay, and the Yemen Arab Republic under Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Since 1967, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem (both taken from Jordan), Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip (taken from Egypt) and the Golan Heights (taken from Syria) after the Six-Day War can be argued to have been under stratocratic rule.
Fictional stratocracies
Stratocratic forms of government have been popular in fictional stories.
-
The country of Amestris in the Fullmetal Alchemist manga and anime series is a nominal parliamentary republic without elections,
-
Bowser from the Super Mario video game franchise is the supreme leader of a stratocratic empire in which he has many other generals working under his militaristic rules such as Kamek, Private Goomp, Sergeant Guy, Corporal Paraplonk and many others.
-
The Cardassian Union of the Star Trek universe can be described as a stratocracy, with a constitutionally and socially sanctioned, as well as a politically dominant military that nonetheless has immense Totalitarianism characteristics.
-
In Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino's , the Earth Kingdom is very divided and during the Hundred Year War relies on an unofficial Confederation stratocratic rule of small towns to maintain control from the Fire Nation's military, without the Earth Monarch's assistance.
-
Both Eldia and Marley from the Japanese manga and anime series Attack on Titan are stratocratic nations ruled by military governments. After a coup d'état, the government of Eldia was displaced in favor of a military-led system with a puppet monarchy as its public front.
-
The Galactic Empire from the original Star Wars trilogy can be described as a stratocracy. Although ruled by the Sith through its Emperor, Sheev Palpatine, known secretly as Darth Sidious, the functioning of the entire government was controlled by the military and explicitly sanctioned by its leaders. All sectors were controlled by a Moff or Grand Moff who were also high-ranking military officers.
-
The Global Defense Initiative from the Command & Conquer franchise is another example: initially being a United Nations task force to combat the Brotherhood of Nod and research the alien substance Tiberium, later expanding to a worldwide government led by military leaders
-
Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft features an antagonistic group of Orcish clans, which joined in the formation of The Iron Horde, a militaristic clan governed by warlords.
-
In Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, the Terran Federation was set up by a group of military veterans in Aberdeen, Scotland when governments collapsed following a world war.
-
The Turians of Mass Effect is another example of a fictional stratocracy, where the civilian and military populations cannot be distinguished, and the government and the military are the same, and strongly meritocratic, with designated responsibilities for everyone.
-
The five members of Greater Turkiye in the manga and anime are called stratocracies, with them being based on the Ottoman Empire.
See also
-
Junta (governing body)
-
Militarism
-
Military government:
-
Political strongman
Sources
