The causes of military insubordination: Explaining military organizational behavior in China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand

This study explains why certain militaries comply with the task of regime maintenance while others do not. Specifically, it describes the conditions under which armed forces will obey an authoritarian regime's orders to suppress demonstrations during times of political crises. The dissertation analyzes the cases of military compliance to the task of regime maintenance in June 1989 China and May 1992 Thailand; and non-compliance in October 1973 Thailand, May 1998 Indonesia and February 1986 Philippines.; The central argument is that military insubordination of an authoritarian regime's orders to suppress popular demonstrations occurs: (1) when there is intense intra-military conflict; and (2) arising from these contestations, the politically marginalized officer(s) gains domestic and foreign support for the non-compliant act against the authoritarian regime. The non-compliance of orders to suppress protests against authoritarian rule is the politically marginalized officer(s)' move to eliminate the authoritarian regime and their rival(s) within the armed forces.; To provide a robust test of the intra-military conflict argument, I tested the proposition with two alternative explanations---one based on principal-agent models, and the other on the military's mission. I find that the intra-military conflict proposition consistently explains the variance on the dependent variable (the extent of military subordination) in the five case studies while the other two theoretical propositions fared less well.