Drawing a Line in the Sand: How Authoritarian Military Behavior Can Help make sense of Democracy

When autocracies emulate democratic features and democracies adopt authoritarian characteristics, elections, representation, and civil liberties become insufficient in drawing a line between the two realms. As the recent surge in authoritarianism was notably driven by militaries overthrowing young democracies and entrenched autocrats alike, this paper will investigate how civil-military relations can contribute to improving regime classifications and benchmarking regime changes between democratic and authoritarian regimes. Building on literature from civil-military studies, authoritarianism research, and empirical examples, eight essential functions of militaries will be outlined across executive, judiciary and legislative branches. Coups indicate that something has already gone wrong in governance and stability of a regime. Shedding light on how militaries operate within a political system beyond coups on the other hand sheds light on executive attributes that are often disregarded in measurements of democracy.