A Theoretical Approach to Military Rule in New States: Reference-Group Theory and the Ghanaian Case

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A Striking characteristic of the literature on military rule in developing countries is the gap between theoretical expectations and political, social, and economic reality. On the one hand, practitioners of comparative social and political theory have tended to view the military, at least in the non-Latin American area, as an organization capable of playing an important modernizing role. On the other hand, empirical researchers, often the very same individuals who at a different time wear the hat of the “theoretical practitioner,” have found the performance of the military as political agents of modernization to have been rather dismal.

This publication has 17 references indexed in Scilit: