From Anti-Elitism to Militarization: Why Populists Forge Alliances with the Military

Why do populist leaders forge an alliance with the military? Populism is commonly defined as an anti-elitist appeal to the will of 'the people' against a detached elite. The military, however, represents one of the most hierarchical formalizations of state-power and a central pillar of this elite. From this perspective, populists and the military should be natural antagonists. Still, once in power, populist leaders often cooperate closely with the armed forces, involve them in political decision-making, and exploit them for political purposes. Rodrigo Duterte’s appointments of generals to key cabinet positions in the Philippines and Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transfer of security roles to the Mexican military are striking examples for such collaborations. This tension between the anti-elitist stance of populists and their actual governing practices raises important questions about the dynamics of populist-military relations. This paper argues that alliances between populist leaders and the military are strategic responses to populists' structural weaknesses. When lacking the backbone of strong, institutionalized parties, populists in office seek to compensate for this deficit by relying on the military to provide organizational capacity, legitimacy and coercive power. The argument is tested using a novel dataset covering all populist leaders from 1990 to 2020. The dataset contains variables on populists’ institutional context, leader-specific characteristics, and the presence and extent of populist-military alliances. In line with the theoretical framework, the statistical analysis shows that such alliances are significantly more likely when populist parties are weak and the populist leader holds personal connections to the military. Through this theoretical and empirical strategy, this paper advances contemporary research on populism, civil-military relations and political militarization.