Abstracts : L’essentiel de la sociologie politique militaire africaine
Cas des différents régimes prétoriens au Congo-Kinshasa
This book is a scientific sketch that lays the groundwork for African military sociology. It essentially analyzes the interactions between African armies of the post-independence period and political power. The book proposes some avenues to explore in order to make the reforms of the army and the security services more efficient in a sociopolitical environment compatible with democracy and the rule of law.
In fact, military sociology can generally be defined as the branch of sociology that studies the interactions of the military institution with its external environment. Army – Political Power – Civilian populations are three major players in military sociology.
Therefore, one understands by military political sociology, the analysis of the relations between contemporary armies and political power.
The book is intended to provide a cross-cutting and synthetic analysis of the functioning and evolution of African armies since the accession of African states to independence and their interactions with political power, mainly, and civil society in the alternative.
The book addresses one of the important aspects of African political sociology in that the army is the ideal reflection of most of the evolution of the socio-political situation of Black African countries since their accession to independence. Thus, the book’s main objective is to analyze in depth the socio-political status, the role and the impact of the military factor in the institutionalization of the political order in Africa, taking the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as the main reference, and the problematic of the laborious reforms of the security services.
The book is divided into three main parts. The first part deals with general theoretical and thematic concepts relating to military sociology in general and aspects specific to African military sociology in detail. It tries to understand why the African armies have not really been or are not exclusively, or often primarily, exclusively military institutions and why they often invest the socio-political and economic fields more than those of security and national defense. In this section, our analysis focuses on the Praetorian aspects of African armies and regimes and the evolving conflicts in Africa as well as the issue of security in sub-Saharan Africa. The second part of this book is devoted to illustrating the elements developed in the first part by describing in a transversal way the praetorian evolution of armies and security services in the DRC since 1960. Finally in the third part, we will strive to mark some This will enable African armies to evolve towards armies focused primarily on sovereign missions and playing a republican role in the democratic transitions that most African states are currently experiencing.
Review of Boniface Musavuli
“Dear Jean-Jacques. I learned so much by reading your book again. The average citizen in Africa regards the army as a force of war or repression without really knowing what is in the background, namely a force of ethno-regional domination and a tool for enriching the ruling elites. . But also an unconscious force of the geopolitical threats hovering over Africa (greed of the great powers over “useful and profitable areas”, expansion of Islamist terrorism) but also internal threats resulting from community frustrations at the failure of the model of terrorism. Nation-state and the inability of public authorities to meet the needs of the population. I really like the “dilemma of the weak state”, a state that, relying on the army to impose itself, ends up creating more problems than it hoped to solve, because of improper use brute force.
The book is at the same time rich of timely contributions of great thinkers (Clausewitz, Weber, Fukuyama, Machiavelli, Huntington, Buzan …) that hangs on the references of classical scientific and academic research, and fascinating by its pioneering side on a field little explored, “the military sociology” of an Africa that you perceive as in the pre-Westphalian phase, and whose ruling elites do not seem to measure the gravity.
It’s a little pearl that many people will have as a bedside book. ” (Boniface Musavuli)
The book contains at the end a glossary that explains some key concepts commonly used in the military, security, strategic, geopolitical and political fields.
