TASK 8: FOUR CHARACTERISTIC OF MILITARY RULE

A military dictatorship is a form of government where the political power remains within the
military where a state or country is ruled directly by the military. Different military regimes
can be distinguished by the place the military hold in the decision making structure of the
country or by the power that they handle.
One of the four characteristic of military rule is military often has more cohesion and
institutional structure than any other type of institutions of society. The military dictatorship
was ruled by a junta or a committee that consist of several officers from militarys most
senior leadership which representing the three service consist of army, navy and the air force
who is the supreme role in the policy making. This military junta usually appoints a civilian
cabinet to administer under its authority. Parties and legislature are suppressed or only a
single official party is permitted and they are often consider as nominal and subservient
artefact of the military dictatorship.
Next, there is the presidential type in which the military act as a supportive role rather than a
creative or supreme role where the cabinet is form from civilian rather than military member
itself. In many countries, the larger the military cabinet permit the civil service, a wider
authorisation of military received in running affairs.
Another characteristic of military rule is that military force is used to organised violence
against opponents and the key to military rule performance is to be obedience to orders with
question higher authority. Military force use violence as the ultimate defence of state interests
and against internal resistance. Due to the militarys rigid bureaucratic structure and its
relative isolation from other social forces, the military is an intensely conservative structure.
Although the military forces remain strongly hierarchical, there are two forces in particular
which are modifying the internal dynamics of the military which are increasing the
technologies content of modern war where instead of being mainly composed to the fighting
troops, the military forces are structured around systems of advanced technology without
questioning the commands that were given.
The other forces was promoting changes in military forces toward civilian authority comes
from soldiers who refuse to be submissive which will breakdown the traditional social
structure will leads to collapsing between the extension of state power and authority modes of
organisation on one hand.

However, the higher the level of participation by a societys population in military forces tend
to reduces structured inequality in the society and it will likely to be lower with high
participation guerrilla warfare than with low participation conventional forces. Military
forces have two main roles in society which is defence of the state against foreign military
threat and defence of the state against internal challenges.