![]() ![]() The power of functioning states rests on the combination of both dimensions. Governments, especially those associated with the modern state, need to be understood as two-sided phenomena: on the one hand as political and administrative phenomena, having staffs and capacities, and on the other as moral and legal phenomena, especially as enjoying legitimacy. That might seem to be nothing more than a simple consequence of the definition of military government as authority exercised by armed forces over foreign citizens, but it has a wider significance. The first of these is simply that the military government is not the legitimate power or an agency of the legitimate power. This is unfortunate for it is also a fascinating form of government precisely because of its peculiarities and paradoxes. ![]() Military government as a system of rule under conditions of military occupation can be said to have been largely ignored by the literature of political science. Where textbooks of comparative politics or comparative government refer to ‘military government’, they mean those governments in which the normal positions of government are occupied by soldiers and where authority is exercised over fellow citizens, often for a prolonged period. Yet this military government has not been subject to systematic comparative study. Authority exercised by the armed forces over foreign citizens counted as ‘military government’. Authority exercised by the armed forces over fellow citizens it described as ‘martial law proper’, clearly understanding the exercise of this authority as taking place in temporary states of emergency or conditions of civil war. The authority exercised over members of those forces was described as the exercise of ‘military law’. When in 1866 members of the US Supreme Court sought to disentangle various forms of authority exercised by the armed forces, they set out a threefold distinction. Military occupation typically entails some measure of military government. Military Government as a System of Rule: Peculiarities and Paradoxes Peter Stirk ![]()
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