What do you think?
Rate this book
By Steven A. Cook - Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development (2007-03-28) [Paperback]
Excellent Book
- GenresPolitics
Paperback
First published March 13, 2007
2 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Steven A. Cook
9 books18 followersSteven A. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also the author of The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). Cook contributes regularly to foreign policy journals such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He also runs a blog about Middle Eastern politics and history.
Cook travels to the Middle East, usually Turkey and Egypt, several times a year and has lived in Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Ankara, and Ramallah. He knows three languages: English, Arabic, and Turkish. His research is primarily steeped in civil-military relations in the Middle East and he appears frequently on television and radio interviews to provide expert commentary on unfolding current events in the Middle East.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Cook travels to the Middle East, usually Turkey and Egypt, several times a year and has lived in Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Ankara, and Ramallah. He knows three languages: English, Arabic, and Turkish. His research is primarily steeped in civil-military relations in the Middle East and he appears frequently on television and radio interviews to provide expert commentary on unfolding current events in the Middle East.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 1, 2014
I tried to like it. I didn't mind so much his attempt to generalize his point across diverse cases, the lack of subtlety in historical changes, and the lack of mentioning of Indonesia (is Turkey the "only" democratized Muslim country? hello?). Ok, Maybe these points did not make the book "great." But most importantly... his policy recommendation that the FRENCH intervene into Algeria is really a catastrophic misunderstanding of the Algerian history, even for someone who knows nothing about the Middle East like me.
August 25, 2018
The Men Behind the Curtains
Sir Humphrey: Well, it is a very sensitive part of the world. Unstable.
Prime Minister Hacker: They (the Foreign Office) are always telling me how stable it is.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, yes...indeed it is. But it is an unstable sort of stability.
Yes Prime Minister : A Victory for Democracy
What was written to explain current events becomes interesting as history. Professor Steven Cook's 2007 book draws an interesting series of political parallels between the Egyptian, Turkish and Algerian regimes. All three, he cautions, are authoritarian but not totalitarian, all are run by the military as an oligarchy, all present themselves as guardians of the peoples' freedoms and all with an active Islamist opposition in waiting. In Algeria it is the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), in Egypt it's the Muslim Brotherhood and in Turkey it was the National Salvation Party, followed by Refah and currently the AKP.
All offer a facade of democratic freedoms however in real issues of control the cards are carefully stacked in favour of the military. What may be surprising to some is how stable the regimes have been since their initial revolutions, and this is a tribute to the skill at which the military partnered with their civilian elites have constructed a multitude of institutions to channel consent. This presents a facade of pluralism and benevolence while creating structures that largely benefit themselves in wealth, privilege and power. Moreover all made the same mistake of encouraging an Islamic opposition with the assumption that it would be both apolitical and a a counter to the appeal of communism and the left. (pp107)
The first two chapters are an overview followed by a separate chapter for each country. IMV the chapter on Algeria has the strongest breakdown, and because the regime is still intact though aging and potentially reaching its end of shelf life, the essence of Cook's estimation continues to be valid. For the same reasons the chapter on Egypt remains true as well. Even though the military's party the NDP is no longer in power and Mubarak was replaced by Morsi by revolution and popular vote, the change was still mediated by the military who, when faced with substantial dissatisfaction and result and the Islamization of the country, engineered a counter coup, which is where we are today. It parallels nicely with Algeria in 1992 where the military annulled the election of the FIS and the Turkish military ban of Erbakan's Refah in 1997. Both reversions had popular civilian support.
Since the time of publication the Turkish case became more complex. Between 2002-2007 Erdogan's AKP began to successfully take control from the military and Cook is able to give us some insight into the process. Both Refah and AKP emphasized social justice issues designed to appeal to the Turkey's urban filling gaps that the State ignored in health care, job training, tutoring and food assistance, and when in power used party patronage appointments to consolidate control domestic ministries while the military pursued a defense policy that included attacks in Iraq on the Kurdish revolutionary PKK and cooperation with Israel. For its part the AKP successfully sought investment from Saudi Arabia and the GCC into the Turkish economy, tried rapprochement with Assad's Syria over water disputes and the Kurds, and signed a multi-billion $ oil supply deal with Iran. Another difference was a distinctly anti-Western bias, for example it negatively portrayed Turkey's role in the Bosnian conflict as a sell-out to the West. (pp118). While the change may appear to be democratic in fact what may be occurring is simply the changing of the guard. Turkey has jailed more journalists than any other nation (76) and 2013 saw wide spread protests that the government used force to suppress.
Cook concludes with some light comparisons to similar political evolutions in Latin America, Indonesia and Pakistan. I found it a useful framework for understanding how these sorts of regimes persist and why they are resistant to democratic reforms.
Sir Humphrey: Well, it is a very sensitive part of the world. Unstable.
Prime Minister Hacker: They (the Foreign Office) are always telling me how stable it is.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, yes...indeed it is. But it is an unstable sort of stability.
Yes Prime Minister : A Victory for Democracy
What was written to explain current events becomes interesting as history. Professor Steven Cook's 2007 book draws an interesting series of political parallels between the Egyptian, Turkish and Algerian regimes. All three, he cautions, are authoritarian but not totalitarian, all are run by the military as an oligarchy, all present themselves as guardians of the peoples' freedoms and all with an active Islamist opposition in waiting. In Algeria it is the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), in Egypt it's the Muslim Brotherhood and in Turkey it was the National Salvation Party, followed by Refah and currently the AKP.
All offer a facade of democratic freedoms however in real issues of control the cards are carefully stacked in favour of the military. What may be surprising to some is how stable the regimes have been since their initial revolutions, and this is a tribute to the skill at which the military partnered with their civilian elites have constructed a multitude of institutions to channel consent. This presents a facade of pluralism and benevolence while creating structures that largely benefit themselves in wealth, privilege and power. Moreover all made the same mistake of encouraging an Islamic opposition with the assumption that it would be both apolitical and a a counter to the appeal of communism and the left. (pp107)
The first two chapters are an overview followed by a separate chapter for each country. IMV the chapter on Algeria has the strongest breakdown, and because the regime is still intact though aging and potentially reaching its end of shelf life, the essence of Cook's estimation continues to be valid. For the same reasons the chapter on Egypt remains true as well. Even though the military's party the NDP is no longer in power and Mubarak was replaced by Morsi by revolution and popular vote, the change was still mediated by the military who, when faced with substantial dissatisfaction and result and the Islamization of the country, engineered a counter coup, which is where we are today. It parallels nicely with Algeria in 1992 where the military annulled the election of the FIS and the Turkish military ban of Erbakan's Refah in 1997. Both reversions had popular civilian support.
Since the time of publication the Turkish case became more complex. Between 2002-2007 Erdogan's AKP began to successfully take control from the military and Cook is able to give us some insight into the process. Both Refah and AKP emphasized social justice issues designed to appeal to the Turkey's urban filling gaps that the State ignored in health care, job training, tutoring and food assistance, and when in power used party patronage appointments to consolidate control domestic ministries while the military pursued a defense policy that included attacks in Iraq on the Kurdish revolutionary PKK and cooperation with Israel. For its part the AKP successfully sought investment from Saudi Arabia and the GCC into the Turkish economy, tried rapprochement with Assad's Syria over water disputes and the Kurds, and signed a multi-billion $ oil supply deal with Iran. Another difference was a distinctly anti-Western bias, for example it negatively portrayed Turkey's role in the Bosnian conflict as a sell-out to the West. (pp118). While the change may appear to be democratic in fact what may be occurring is simply the changing of the guard. Turkey has jailed more journalists than any other nation (76) and 2013 saw wide spread protests that the government used force to suppress.
Cook concludes with some light comparisons to similar political evolutions in Latin America, Indonesia and Pakistan. I found it a useful framework for understanding how these sorts of regimes persist and why they are resistant to democratic reforms.
June 18, 2013
I had given 2-stars for this book about five years ago. But I am changing it, just because and after watching his ignorant tweets on Turkey. A completely foreigner look into Turkish politics. I'm so angry that I am urged to correct my review.
August 11, 2017
more of a historical book than an analytical one, it gives informative ideas about the rise of military institutions, Cook tried to link the stability of an authoritarian regime with the presence of a strong military assistance, however it didn't clearly give a theoretical sense of this relation, maybe that's why Cook failed to per-see the role of the Egyptian military in the 25th January uprisings!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews