Civil-Military Relations in Southeast Asia.

• Author: Priamarizki, Adhi

Civil-Military Relations in Southeast Asia. By Aurel Croissant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Softcover: 82pp.

Due to the diverse characteristics of Southeast Asia's armed forces, as well as the complexities of political systems and levels of democratization, deciphering civil-military relations in the region is not an easy task. Aurel Croissant's monograph, Civil-Military Relations in Southeast Asia, attempts to examine the subject. The author provides cogent insights and a timely analysis of the region's civil-military relations. The monograph provides empirical discussion on the topic as well as an alternative framework to western-based civil-military relations models. In addition, his analysis provides meaningful insights into the history of Southeast Asian militaries and their political adventurism. He also highlights existing problems in the study of Southeast Asian civil-military relations, such as a preoccupation with the role of the military in democratization processes, and an overemphasis on Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand (pp. 2-3). However, his analysis of regional trends elides important details, such as the influence of the Japanese wartime occupation on the political behaviour of Southeast Asian militaries, and the impact of democratization on the business interests of regional militaries.

Rather than discussing each Southeast Asian country separately, the author adopts a thematic approach. Croissant uses historical origins, types of civil-military relations and the roles of regional militaries as points of analysis that also serve as foundations for his main argument. He argues that four factors have caused civil-military relations in the region to diverge: first, the legacies of colonial rule and Japanese occupation during the Second World War; second, the transition from colonial rule to independence and the role of coercion; third, threat perceptions during the early post-independence period; and fourth, the type of civilian elite structure and the strength of political parties (pp. 8-11). While these explanations help the reader understand the dynamics of regional civil-military relations, they have already been utilized by other scholars working on single case study civil-military relations research. Nevertheless, the absence of these elaborations will leave the reader with an incomplete understanding of Southeast Asia's civil military relations.

Among the four abovementioned causal factors, the...