An Autocracy at War
Explaining Egypt's Military Effectiveness, 1967 and 1973
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6122015 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Risa Brooks (0000-0003-3157-398X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 396-430 |
| Publication date | 2006-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Security Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0963-6412 • E-ISSN: 1556-1852 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09636410601028321 |
| OpenAlex | W2076937691 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 24 |
In the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt shocked the world with its atrocious performance in battle, only to stun the world again with its remarkable military turnaround in the October 1973 war. Existing studies, which emphasize culture, social structure, and regime type, have a difficult time explaining why this single autocratic state, in such a short period of time, exhibited such extremes in its military competence. None can explain both why Egypt performed so poorly in 1967 and improved so significantly in 1973. Other explanations such as military strategy and learning explain the puzzle in part, but they alone cannot account for the outcome. This article presents a theory that accounts for the divergence in effectiveness, focusing on underlying differences in the fabric of the autocratic regime. It argues that changes in the balance of civil-military power in the state—born from more fundamental differences in domestic politics in the autocracy—shaped three areas of military activity critical to military effectiveness: strategic assessment, command, and control, and leadership. In developing this argument, the article both contributes to growing scholarship on the sources of states' military effectiveness and explains why Egypt's performance varied so significantly in these historically consequential wars
Ancient history · Autocracy · Battle · Democracy · Development economics · Economics · Military operations other than war · Military science · Military sociology · Military theory · Military threat · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Revolution in Military Affairs · Scholarship · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Medicine · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
Democratic Control and Military Effectiveness of the Turkish Armed Forces
Personalism and Negotiation during Civil Conflicts
Avoiding the Coup-Proofing Dilemma
Security Assistance and the Crisis of the Liberal International Order
Conceptualizing maritime constabulary effectiveness (MCE)
War on two fronts
Coup-Proofing and Military Effectiveness in Interstate Wars, 1967–99
Endgames
Capital gains
Assessing the impact of non-military aid on tactical military effectiveness
Corrupting the Battlefield
Sadat as Supreme Commander
Moderating Diffusion
Air superiority and battlefield victory
Do Democracies Engage Less in Coup-Proofing? On the Relationship between Regime Type and Civil-Military Relations 1
An outlook into the Turkish civil‐military relations after the 2016 coup
Does Coup-Proofing Work? Political–Military Relations in Authoritarian Regimes amid the Arab Uprisings
Rebels fire and maneuver too
Personalist Regime and Rebel Sponsorship in Civil Conflicts
Civil-military Pathologies and Defeat in War
Preventing Coups d’état
Integrating the Civil–Military Relations Subfield
How the Party Commands the Gun
The Varieties of Civilian Praetorianism
| Unique citing works | 24 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,6 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2026 (16) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 24 |