Analysis of Civil-Military Relations of Ghana from 1957 to 2022

The Constitutional basis of the Civil-Military Relations pertaining to Ghana emerged out of its history with military interventions. Given the narrative of Ghana’s civil-military relations and those of some of the nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, it may be appropriate not to attribute the constitutional approach underlying the civil-military design in Ghana to the “Concordance” or “Separation” model. Those models probably provide realistic civil-military approaches for Western industrialized nations with huge standing armies, militias, and good governance systems. Perhaps the “Constitutional” model may be considered as the primary denominator for analysis of the legal framework on Civil-Military Relations in Ghana and in Sub-Saharan Africa, despite the occasional similarities in “Separation” or “Concordance” theory in those nations.

Introduction

The type of Civil-Military Relations advocated by Huntington and other proponents of the Separation theory of Civil-Military Relations does not provide the mechanism or incentives to stop military takeovers in Ghana and other African nations (Huntington, 1956a, 1957). Recently, it has been argued that because “there has been no military intervention in Ghana’s political affairs in the fourth republic,” this provides some sort of evidence that “there has been agreement among three societal partners–namely, political elites, military and the citizenry on four variables, such as the social composition of the officer corps; political decision-making; and recruitment and military-style” without considering other variables such as incentives to the military, over and above what their counterparts in the civil service obtain (Salifu, 2020, p. 618). Making such a claim would depend on the existence of either a de facto or de jure agreement. However, this assertion cannot be sustained by customary national law or practices on civil-military relations or labor union law since the military cannot belong to trade unions in Ghana. Salifu’s paper of 2020 on “Concordance Civil-Military Relations in Ghana’s Fourth Republic” in the journal “Armed Forces and Society” religiously follows Rebecca Schiff’s Concordance theory without regard to the legal framework of Civil-Military Relations practice in Ghana today. Although Rebecca Schiff’s reconsideration of Huntington’s dialects on civil-military relations was critical, if not condemning, her Concordance theory did not fare any better in explaining why or providing the solutions as to the incidence of military takeovers in Africa, despite the integration and cooperation between the Military, Political elites and the Citizenry (Schiff, 1995, pp. 5–8, 23). Salifu’s paper also suffers the same shortcoming because it attributed the absence of military intervention in Ghana since the commencement of constitutional rule in 1992 to an apparent “agreement between the military, political elite and the citizenry.” The absence of military intervention is simply due to the well-documented abysmal performance of past military leadership in Ghana and the military’s acceptance of the fact that “democratically elected leaders must rule” (Nartey, 2019, p. 105). Even between one military administration during times of military takeovers and entrenchment and the armed forces of Ghana, or those of so many nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, it has been noticed that the power-grabbing mentality of the military was and is no different from those of their civilian counterparts (Ba-Taa-Banah, 2019; Hutchful, 1997b; Williams, 1998).

Despite the operationalization of these two theories, that of Huntington and Schiff, many nations suffer or have suffered from periodic military intervention, sometimes leading to actual and prolonged military administrations. A military takeover is a phenomenon in which Schiff advocated that it should be halted if the nations followed her prescription. That is to say, “if the three partners (namely, Military, Political Elite, and Citizenry) agree on the four indicators of,” “social composition of the officer corps, the political decision-making process, recruitment method, and military style,” then takeovers should be halted (Schiff, 1995, pp. 5–8). Like her predecessors, her prescription was influenced by the United States legal framework and culture. In her book, she adopts two nations’ cultures, Israel and India, to explain the importance of culture in civil-military relations. This was inappropriate for Africa as a basis for evaluating the cultures of the motley collection of African nations. This is due to the dissimilarities between the more homogeneous Israeli and the more heterogeneous Indian cultures of Hindus, various Islamic Sects, Sikhs, Christians, and others. The lack of cultural analysis and application in the Civil-Military Relations in the Separation Theory was an issue that Schiff condemned Huntington for ignoring in his treatise. However, she also approached the cultural discussion even in Israel by not considering the issue of racial diversity in Israel, with a considerable Arab population estimated to be about two million or 20.95% of the Israel population (Arab Citizens of Israel & Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2019).

India has wicked issues with ethnicity, regionalism, and gender violence and how to achieve better integration of its population in all walks of human industry (Commisceo Global, n.d.). Adopting disparate Israeli and Indian cultures as common denominators for the analysis of Concordance theory showed how truly American Schiff and Huntington are, and that even in their honest effort to incorporate a world view in their intellectual work, appear to have engaged in cultural fusion much in the same way that most American citizens think of the Continent of Africa with 54 separate nations as one country. To provide a balance, Americans are not alone in having the mistaken view of Africa as being just one country because Europeans also think Africa is one country. In contrast, Africans, by and large, do not think of Europe as one country. Although I do not assume for one moment that there was subterfuge for the error of cultural fusion in their treaties, their honest efforts were frustrated, if not completely misdirected, from their apparent goal of achieving inclusive intellectual discussion of their respective theories, namely Separation and Concordance theories, due in part to the willingness to gratuitously see the democratic world, perhaps, as extension of the United States of America (Huntington, 1956a; Schiff, 1995).

Focal Themes of this Paper

In this work, I will show that, during the colonial administration of the Gold Coast, the Civil-Military Relations that were practiced in the Gold Coast under British colonial rule and that of other common-law African nations that were similarly situated was not dictated by the Separation theory as articulated by Huntington’s writing in 1956–1957. In the years after the attainment of independence in 1957, the desire of the first President of Ghana to move the nation towards an authoritarian socialist political system began to destroy the remnants, if any, of the Separation theory of the Civil-Military Relations that might have been left behind by the departing colonial British administrators of the Gold Coast (Nartey, 2019, pp. 105, 109–110; Salifu, 2020). “The fourth republican constitution of Ghana establishes a de jure democratic control over the military in much the same way that the earlier three republics which failed did. The implication here is that it is one thing establishing structures in a constitution; it is another getting the constitution to become the norm which guides actions and inactions” (Hutchful, 1997a; Nartey, 2019, p. 109).

I will also show that the subsequent military intervention in 1966 under the direction of the United States and Britain that overthrew the government of Kwame Nkrumah marked the beginning of a systematic detachment from the Separation Theory in favor of Military Directives and Prescriptions and from “Objective Military Control” to an entrenched “Subjective Military Control” (Hersh, 1978; Hutchful, 1973; Ali, 2014, pp. 546–548). Hersh and Hutchful wrote about the events that precipitated the military takeover of 1966 and toppled the government of Kwame Nkrumah to halt the growth of Socialism in Ghana and parts of Africa. Ali’s (2014) paper was on the contradictions of the Concordance Theory and its failure to understand military intervention in his nation, Pakistan, and that military intervention in Pakistan was not due to the lack of concordance but rather due to discordance (Ali, 2014, p. 548, Schiff, 2016). The third section of this paper will review both the separation and Concordance theories and explain further why their application to civil-military relations in Africa, as a general matter, should be done with caution. The last installment of this paper will attempt to articulate the attributes of the current status or nature of the Civil-Military Relations in Ghana and comparator nations in Sub-Saharan Africa and conclude.

Control of the Military in the Gold Coast and in Ghana

This section shows that, during the colonial administration of the Gold Coast, the Civil-Military Relations practiced in the Gold Coast under British colonial rule and that of other Common Law African nations that were similarly situated were not based on Separation or Concordance theory. The initial military strategy of the Gold Coast Constabulary from 1879 until the 1920s was dictated by imperialist territorial acquisition and nation-building (Boahen, 1975; McLaughlin & Owusu-Ansah, 1994). The Gold Coast Constabulary was formed in 1901 and named the Gold Coast Regiment, a segment of the West African Frontier Forces under the direction of Major General Henry Templar Alexander, the Colonial Officer of the British Government.

In 1957, when Gold Coast became Ghana after independence, the Ghana Armed Forces were formed, with Major General Stephen Otu appointed as the first Ghanaian Chief of Defence Staff in 1961 by the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah (Chief of Defence Staff-Ghana, 2008). That is to say, between 1957 and 1961, the national army’s leadership gap was filled with expatriate officers from Britain on loan to Ghana (Berry, 1994). Until then, the leadership and the Gold Coast Army’s professional corps were mostly Caucasian British officers, but the junior ranks were in the hands of local officers or enlisted cadres who played subordinate roles (Hutchful, 1998). Power was based on paternalistic and segregated standards, similar to the segregation witnessed in the security services and recruitment of locals or non-white citizens, even in South Africa under the Apartheid Regime between 1948 and 1994 (Bolliger, 2021). The “Civil”-Military Relations in the colonial era could be best described as Military-Occupation-Relations, based on discrimination, segregation, directives, orders, edicts, and pronouncements as the official standard operating procedure or norms and means of control of the nationals, administration, and communication. From 1966, the Armed Forces were extensively involved in politics, which led to the mounting of coup d’états under the tutorship of the United States CIA (CIA, 2015; Hutchful, 1998).

Post-Independence Era Under Civilian and Military Rule

The appointment of the first Ghanaian professional soldier to the rank of Chief of Defence Staff in 1961 appeared to have signaled a new era in Ghana towards developing healthy Civil-Military Relations driven by ‘objective military control’ goals. Huntington defined “Civilian Control” as “the relative power of civilians and military groups.” That “civilian control is achieved to the extent to which the power of the military group is reduced.” In other words, “how can military power be minimized” (Huntington, 1956b, p. 80). The apparent positive development in 1961 in Ghana towards an emerging healthy civil-military control was undermined as soon as it had begun by the proponent of this drive: Kwame Nkrumah. Since its formative years until 1992, when the constitutional rule was re-launched, it may be intellectual dishonesty to state that Ghana has had Civil-Military Relations based on Separation or Concordance approaches or that the country has been ruled under a Civil-Military Relations culture. What appears to have existed, by the preponderance of the historical evidence, have been binary “Subjective Military Control” by civilian administrations from probably 1920 until 1966 and equally “Subjective Civilian Control” by the Military governments from 1966 until 1992 as a result of military takeovers with occasional respite from these polarities? In the years after the attainment of independence in 1957, the desire of the first President of Ghana to move the nation towards an authoritarian socialist political system destroyed the budding notion of either Separation or Concordance Theory of Civil-Military Relations that might have been seeded in 1961 immediately after the attainment of independence in 1957.

This is important because Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence from British colonial rule. Whatever Ghana did at those historical crossroads mattered to the rest of the African nations and, in some cases. Nkrumah’s government became more dictatorial despite its immense investments in hydroelectric power, education, infrastructure, Pan-Africanism, and financial assistance to other nations’ quests for self-determination. Nkrumah maneuvered to have the Peoples Party Congress’s (CPP) control of parliament to enact the Preventive Detention Act of 1958 (PDA) barely a year after independence.

Civil-military relations work optimally under the rule of law. Nkrumah did not appear to be interested in the rule of law. In 1957, in order to rid his government of critical feedback, he enacted the Deportation Act of 1957 and deported persons whose presence in Ghana was deemed inimical to the national security of Ghana (Ashworth & Zedner, 2014; Nelson & Gyamerah, 2009). While Ashworth and Zedner took the position that the Prevention Detention Act is probably the most dangerous measure in a democracy to be taken, Nelson and Gyamerah’s (2009) position is that PDA was, perhaps, a good measure against internal political ‘terrorism’ of some kind in those days. The Act gave the government unfettered powers to incarcerate political opponents, businessmen, women, suspects, and offenders for up to five years without trial and due process. This measure appears to have destroyed the autonomy of the citizenry, the professional soldier, the officer corps, and all other ranks by silencing opposition voices. This led to massive disaffection of the government of Nkrumah, particularly in the Ashanti Region, which led to the devolution of Ghana from a multiparty state to a one-party state.

The narrative given provides a picture of the continuation of colonial rule in terms of power in the hands of the political leader without consideration of the role and participation of all other members of the citizenry, including the personnel of the security agencies. Everyone, every entity, worked at that time to the whim and caprices of the President. Nkrumah’s government was interrupted in a military coup in 1966 that was alleged to have been assisted by the United States and Britain. Huntington described this as the “antithesis of objective civilian control” (Huntington, 1956b, p. 83). Objective civilian control is lost when the military participates in politics “as the military become progressively involved in institutional, class and constitutional politics” because the essence of objective civilian control is the recognition of autonomous military professionalism (Huntington, 1956b, pp. 83–85).

As a result of the military takeover, Nkrumah’s socialist economic policies were abandoned by the National Liberation Council (NLC) in favor of a free-market economic model (Hersh, 1978). During the NLC regime (1966–69), attempts were made to reverse Nkrumah’s vigorous industrialization policies. The reins of government were soon turned over to the democratically elected Dr. Abrefa Busia (1969–71). Busia continued the NLC’s monetary reforms and trade liberalization policies of the IMF and World Bank (Gockel & Vormawor, 2004). Despite the apparent progress being made to turn the nation’s fortunes around, there was another military coup, which Colonel Kuti Ignacious Acheampong led. He ruled henceforth as the National Redemption Council (NRC) chairman. Among its first acts, the NRC decreed a revaluation of the Cedi (devalued earlier by Brigadier A. Afrifa in 1967 and the Progress Party of the government of Busia in 1971), a return of control prices to their pre-devaluation levels, a refusal to pay “unjust” foreign loans that previous civilian governments had taken out; and a fourfold increase in the minimum wage (Leith & Söderling, 2001). While the wage increases were good for labor, they also had an overall incremental effect on the general economy’s prices of goods and services (Fosu, 1989).

General Acheampong’s government expanded state involvement in the economy. It implemented a national drive for food sufficiency, dubbed “Operation Feed Yourself,” which admonished the youth to go into Agriculture. The NRC’s regime, which ruled from 1972 to 1978, was overthrown in a coup due to the repercussions of its currency revaluation. The Supreme Military Council (SMC) immediately embarked on a new round of currency devaluation to salvage the economic crisis in 1978. The economic conditions in the country were so bad that a military uprising occurred on June 4th, 1979. This ushered in the government of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) led by Jerry Rawlings. In a Machiavellian way, Rawlings’ government executed seven former military heads of state by firing squad, namely, General Acheampong, Fred Akuffo, and Akwasi Afrifa. In addition, other military heads were sacrificed, namely Maj Gen. E. K. Utuka; R. E. A. Kotei; Admiral Joy Amerdume; Air Vice Marshal George Y. Boakey; and General Roger Felli; General Acheampong, Akuffo and Akwasi Afrifa. Such activities cannot support any acceptable theory for the respect of human rights and national security.

The AFRC initiated legislation and economic policies that devastated the real economy and financial system that was already crumbling under repressive policies. After four months, it finally handed over power to an elected Dr. Hilary Limann’s government. The Peoples National Party (PNP) stayed in power for barely two years (1979–81). However, it was ousted by Lt. Jerry Rawlings and his compatriots in the Army on December 31st, 1981, establishing the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government. With his charismatic leadership style and his appeal to Eastern Europe during the Cold War, Rawlings initiated the “famous” Economic Recovery Program (ERP), touted as a neoliberal agenda based on the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) of the World Bank and IMF in 1983 (Ewusi, 1987; Frimpong-Ansah, 1991; Osei, 2003).

All these economic and political incidents negatively affected the sense of well-being, happiness, sense of ownership, education, professional development, promotion, patriotism, nepotism, cronyism, and even the general health of the population (Huq, 1989). The effect on the military was a noticeable disregard for the professional soldier. He has allowed his excesses in governance and poor skills in managing big economic infrastructure to go against all the values articulated by Huntington and Schiff on professional soldiers. They allowed themselves to be seduced by the trappings of power, meddled in the nation’s political affairs, and actively became the agents of political dogma and practice.

Beginning from the worsening of conditions from the period immediately after independence through the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Program, through divestiture to the re-introduction of democracy and the rule of law in 1992, there was a consensus that the military did not belong in politics and that they should not allow themselves to be used by the political elite (Feaver, 1996; Nartey, 2019). At that period, instead of Civil-Military Relations, Ghana had Military-Civil Relations because the military was not strong enough to refrain from doing what the Civilians wanted them to do. This was inconsistent with the admonition of Feaver (1996, p. 149) or that of Huntington (1956a, pp. 678–681).

Evolution of the Constitutional Model of Civil-Military Relations and its Attributes

The discussion from now on will focus on the conditions that led to the evolution of the constitutional and prescriptive system being practiced in Ghana, after the failure of the imperialist model, the dictatorship of Nkrumah, and the recklessness of Military leaders that disrupted the normal functioning of society under civilian administration, the suspension of national constitutions and the imposition of military rule (Agyeman-Duah, 2002, p. 10; Ashworth & Zedner, 2014; Nartey, 2019; Nelson & Gyamerah, 2009; Salifu, 2020). It is, therefore, important to bear in mind that Ghana and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were compelled by their history with dictatorial and autocratic civilian maladministration, military institutions that had “become the mirror of the states” and taken over the administration of the nations, resulting in maladministration and human rights abuses, to develop a new paradigm for their Civil-Military Relations based on Constitutional prescriptions (Huntington, 1956b; Nartey, 2019). The disruptions caused by the military interventions compelled the framers of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana to discard “objective military control” in favor of “subjective military control” under the constitutional rule because, by this time, the past military leaders themselves had “civilianized the military” (Huntington, 1956a, 1956b). For example, “in the eight-year rule of President Rawlings (as a serving Military Officer), other serving military officers were appointed to government positions, and soldiers continued to engage in partisan politics” (Agyeman-Duah, 2002; Hutchful, 1997a, as cited in Nartey, 2019). Additionally, “Rawlings continued to rely on the personal loyalty of one section of the military, the specially trained and better equipped 64th Regiment, as an instrument of control both within the military and of the civilian population. Rawlings “seemed more committed to upholding the supremacy of the military and its abrasive tradition than subjecting the institution to democratic control” (Agyeman-Duah, 2002, p. 10).

The developments in Ghana in civil-military relations during the nation’s military administration resonated with the caution of other writers on the topic. The military takeovers rendered the military leadership emasculated, “minimizing military power” and “maximizing the power of the civilian groups” to the detriment of future military professional progression. The distribution of power between civilian political power elites and the military is not as conducive to the emergence of professionalism as it could have been among the members of the officer corps” in the situation of quite several national armed forces (Huntington, 1956b, pp. 80–83).

The attributes of the Constitutional or Prescriptive model are that the State has the power to provide for an activity or has the power to design how people, units, and systems function within Civil-Military Relations. The State has intentionally and by constitutional provisions, subordinated the armed forces under civilian control (Feaver, 1996, pp. 153–154; Nartey, 2019, p. 105; Salifu, 2020). There ought to be the acceptance and acquiescence of the subordination by the armed forces and that there is additional legislation to streamline the constitutional provisions (Nartey, 2019). There should be a demonstration of performative security and military services under the constitutional and legislative design. The relationship between the Armed Forces and the politician comes under a Constitutional construct because all the Constitutional model indicators are present within Ghana’s Civil-Military Relations. The Constitutional design vis-à-vis the Civil-Military Relations operative in Ghana allows for the judicious running of the nation, with the military as second-tier participants and support for the first-tier participants consisting of the executive, parliament, and judiciary. A deviation from the constitutional construct of Ghana’s Civil-Military Relations is not permissible. It may be tantamount to charges of intervention or treason, particularly if the military caused the deviation. Although the Constitutional model is one of collaboration and cooperativeness, it still delineates clear cognitive paths for the civilian authorities involved in that relationship or the military elite, who are also involved in the same relations. Therefore, it is neither the influence of Huntington’s Separation theory nor that of Schiff’s Concordance theory that operates on the Civil-Military Relations in Ghana. However, each of these models or theories operates and collides with the Constitutional model in the case of Ghana from time to time. Ghana enjoys what can be described as weak Civil-Military Relations, which is a bargain from the focus on democratic governance and not because the system actively pursues it, making it appear as an objective military control. It is, in actuality, a subjective military control system that Ghana practices (Asante, 2020, pp. 334–336).

Articles 210 through 215 of the 1992 Constitution in Ghana lay out the Ghana Armed Forces’ functions and mandate. The three branches of government that operate under the principle of Separation of Powers are the Executive, Parliament, and Judiciary. The 1999 Constitution of Nigeria makes similar provisions, Articles 217 to 220, and those of the Gambia, the Republic of Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Malawi, to mention but a few. Despite the social and political controls over the army in Ghana, with some of their professional soldiers working within civilian administration as advisers and on secondment as bureaucratic officers, the civilian-military persuasion of Ghana appears to be predominantly bent towards government organizational control. This view seems somewhat in line with Huntington’s observation that the Framers’ concept of Civilian Control in the U.S. Constitution “was to control the uses to which military forces might be put rather than to control the military per se.” He further opined that “they (the Framers’) were more afraid of military power in the hands of political officials than of political power in the hands of military officers” (Huntington, 1956b, p. 681; Janowitz, 1964, 1983).

In the case of Ghana, the fear that the military might abuse their power if given such a mandate was not merely a theoretical concern but a pragmatic reality that occurred to overturn political power through coup d’états and bloodshed. This epoch in Ghana’s history started in 1966, which saw the violent removal of elected civilian administrators until the commencement of the fourth republican administration in 1992 (Hersh, 1978; Hutchful, 1973). The national military did not only disrupt the existing constitutional rule and government beginning in 1966 but installed themselves as the nation’s rulers. This development of professional soldiers taking up arms against their civilian controllers demonstrated the danger that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution had been overly cautious, about which Huntington had admonished them. Huntington felt the exercise of too much caution led to the design defects inherent in the U.S. type of Civil-Military Relations, which makes it confusing. Huntington also offered that the confusion led to the “fragmentation of authority over the military” with “paradoxical results” or unintended consequences. It appears as if Huntington was arguing against the maximization of objective Civilian Control, where he proffered that it “limited the military in scope to professional matters and relegated (them) to a subordinate position in a pyramid of authority culminating in a single civilian head” (Huntington, 1957, p. 682). Huntington (1957) argued that “their (U.S. Constitution framers) ideas on military officership, military force, and governmental organizations concerning military affairs all reflected a Subjective theory of civilian control” (p. 679). Such dichotomous positions compel one to ask what Huntington wanted to see in the make-up of the Civil-Military Relations.

The reasons or rationale for opting for “Subjective Civil-Military controls” in the common law West African nations are obvious from the literature reviewed thus far. In brief, it was based on the reality that West Africa is politically and militarily volatile. Since 2021 there have been military seizures of power in Chad, Sudan, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger (Souare, 2014). “Of the 486 attempted or successful coups carried out around the world, since 1950, Africa has seen 214, the most of any region with 106 successful”. Additionally, “out of 54 countries on the African Continent, 45 have had at least one coup attempt since 1950. Narrowing the focus to only those countries that have experienced a successful takeover, one in which the perpetrators hold power for at least seven days, the number drops from 45 to 36 or two-thirds of the nations in the continent” (Powell & Thyne, 2011). Civil-Military Relations is defined as “the principal institutional component of military security policy”. Furthermore, “military policy is the program of activities designed to minimize or neutralize efforts to weaken or destroy the nation by armed forces operating from outside its institutional and territorial confines”. Huntington offered that military security policy had various dimensions, which include “quantitative issues of size, recruitment”, and supply chain-management, and “qualitative issues of the organization, composition, equipment and deployment” as well as weaponry and base support systems, and thirdly “issues of utilization of military forces as to when and what circumstances force is brought into action” (Huntington, 1956a, pp. 1–3).

Huntington’s “Subjective” and “Objective” Civil-Military Relations

This section focuses on the objective and subjective qualities of civil-military relations and the review of both the Separation and Concordance theories. In “The Soldier and the State” (1956), Huntington considered the nature of the relationship between the civilian power brokers, politicians, and the role of the soldier in the modern state vis-à-vis societal expectations. He cautioned that it is imperative to view Civil-Military Relations “as a system composed of interdependent elements, the principal components…” of which “… are the formal, structural position of military institutions in the government, the informal role and influence of military groups in politics and society at large, and the nature of the ideologies of military and nonmilitary groups” (Huntington, 1957, p. viii). Huntington described the optimization or maximization of institutional controls over the military on the one hand and under-utilization of the professional soldier on the other hand as “objective civilian controls” and “subjective civilian controls.” These phrases were meant to show the opposite ends of how the efficiencies and effectiveness of the professional soldier are supposed to be harnessed, the role he was supposed to play in collaboration with civilian authorities, and how he is supposed to conduct himself as an adviser. Huntington offered in “The Soldier and the State,” among other things, that civil-military relations’ role in maintaining national security is an important goal.

Huntington (1956a), in a paper titled, “Civilian-Control and the Constitution,” also provided that to ensure effective civilian control of the armed forces and to ensure the absence of military interventions, for example, the officer corps ought to be professionalized (Huntington, 1956a, pp. 678–679). Huntington’s treatise adulated the modern military officer that, in sum, ‘the modern officer corps is a professional body and the officer a professional man’ (Huntington, 1956a, p. 7). He advocated that professionalizing the officer corps entails “Objective Civilian control” within Civil-Military Relations, which grants the Officer Corps autonomy or military expertise, political neutrality, and professional competencies. His “Subjective” and “Objective” demarcation of the role between the military and the civilian political powers led to the Separation theory or model. The Separation Model of Huntington advocated for separate institutional roles for political institutions and separated military institutions from political roles to not civilianize the military but professionalize the officer crops. “Subjective Civilian control” transforms the military into a tool of the state. It also civilianizes the military, which means it plays an independent role in setting national priorities. “In subjective control, the military is among other groups contending and competing for influence in setting policy and ranking national priorities (Mandeles, 2009, pp. 3–4). Huntington’s casting of the attributes of the professional soldier appears to fit into how the army in Ghana and those in other Common Law nations in Africa characterize their officer corps concerning training, hierarchy, and promotions:- every facet of the development of the professional corps of the military is scripted by the Constitution of Ghana and other legislation which are, of course, in consonance with the Constitution. The attributes or values of the modern officer corps consist of expertise, responsibility, and corporate consciousness. For an officer to be considered a professional soldier, he ought to have a specific skill in a specific area of the military establishment and operations. He ought to be a responsible man or woman. “Responsibility” is not limited to only the military but to society. “Corporate consciousness” deals more with a commitment to duty, honesty, transparency, probity, and accountability than just being a team player or an obedient order-taker from superior officers. However, those values are also part of the corporate mindset or conscience.

Autonomy is a big premise upon which “objective civilian-military control” is based. The concept of autonomy may appear to matter only when other moral values such as professional ‘responsibility’ and ‘corporate’ consciousnesses and ‘expertise’ are raised. Regarding capacity over financial matters, procurement of goods and services, and general management of cost, there appears to be a drawback on the Civilian grant of autonomy to the soldier to a restricted and paternalistic contention under civilian control. Although the essence of Objective Civilian control is the recognition of autonomous (self-governing) military professionals, the thinking tends to go against the hierarchical nature of the military and the control over the national purse. In a hierarchical ecosystem, the push for individual autonomy appears inconsistent with the expectations that orders shall be followed, whether one is a professional officer or not (Taylor, 1957). In many of the Sub-Saharan nations and Ghana, budgetary allocations are not within the control of any government entity, such as the Armed Forces, but are in the hands of the Minister of Finance, who is most definitely a civilian. A soldier inured with corporate consciousness would also observe political neutrality and demonstrate a high degree of detachment from civilian machinations to control the military. This goes to the crust of the question raised by Feaver concerning “how to reconcile a military strong enough to do anything the civilians ask them to with a military subordinate enough to do only what civilians authorize them to do” (Feaver, 1996, p. 149). The responsibility of a professional officer to the state makes him a bureaucrat, an agent of the state against the perceived and real enemies of the state “in the management of violence” (Lasswell, 1941). According to Huntington, the professional officer is unlike the enlisted men who “lack the intellectual skills or professional responsibility of the officer” (Huntington, 1957, pp. 17–18).

The discussion of Huntington’s Separation Model naturally leads to the alternative model Rebecca Schiff has offered to either claw back the impact of Huntington on Civil-Military Relations studies or to provide another viewpoint for consideration. Irrespective of the purpose of the post-Huntington theory on the phenomenon of interests, Rebecca Schiff provided the Concordance theory for analyzing Civil-Military Relations in 1995 in her book, “The Military and Domestic Politics: A Concordance Theory of Civil-Military Relations.”

Concordance Theory of Rebecca Schiff

Concordance theory advocated for integrating military organizations in partnership with civil society, government institutions, and military organizations to optimize governance and the rule of law, which Schiff labeled the ‘partners’ (Pion-Berlin & Dudley, 2020). The indicators of the Concordance theory were, for there to be concordance between the partners on Civil-Military Relations, there ought to be these indicators: ‘the social composition of the officer corps; the political decision-making process; the recruitment method; and the military style.’ Additionally, Schiff offered that the possibility of intervention is reduced when these indicators are present or observed in civil-military relations. I have shown in this paper that it is not so (Schiff, 2009, pp. 32–34). A military takeover is not a frequent event in terms of incidences that could have offered value for estimation. Therefore, the degree of reduction of military intervention per Schiff’s model is difficult to calculate. Schiff’s integration concept between military-political life and the citizenry was predicated on constantly changing and self-correcting indicators concerning emerging economies’ military institutions.

Social Composition of the Officer Corps

The first indicator does not suggest a meaningful assessment tool to determine when that indicator has been realized. In the context of Ghana, one could say it means ethnicity, tribe, economic or gender status. Continuing on the Social Composition of the Officer Corps indicator, Anderson’s thesis on “Civil-Military Relations and Concordance Theory: a case study of Argentina (Anderson, 1998, pp. 60–61) correctly stated that, in most democratic societies (particularly in the case of Argentina) “the officer corps usually represents the various constituencies of the nation.” Anderson also noted that the important considerations are “the historical and cultural traditions of those nations” which may “affect agreement over the composition of the officer corps”, and which may be the outcome of legislative tinkering or design (Anderson, 1998, pp. 60–61). In the case of Ghana, the composition of the officer corps is not dictated by rigid regional distribution based on the quota system as a function of population size. It depends largely on the expectations and aspirations of the political party in power concerning whether or not such a party wishes to appoint a majority of the elite officers from the President’s ethnic group or related ethnic group, particularly concerning ranks such as Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of Staff, and Commandants of the various units. The situation in Ghana is not much different from what pertains in the United States of America, where party affiliates of the government in power are chosen to occupy certain “civilian” positions within Civil-Military Relations, including retired military officers who have been on retirement for at least seven years and over.

Political Decision-Making Process

This indicator loses a great deal of intellectual strength when one views the reality and the history of the Ghana Armed Forces in governance and protecting state and societal security. The Ghana Armed Forces, unlike the United States Armed Forces, hardly engage in small wars or asymmetrical wars. Ghana has not ever had a civil war and has not even conducted a unilateral war against another state, as the United States of America is wont of doing or has done in the past. The Ghana Armed Forces have been known for military interventions among the ruling elite, whether civilians or not. What they are known for in international diplomacy and politics is their engagement in Peace-Keeping missions worldwide. This has been so since the Armed Forces’ cognitive withdrawal from internal military interventions of government. In international Peace-keeping missions, issues surrounding the number of soldiers to be deployed to a specific mission are not the exclusive decisions of the government of Ghana but also involve the Supra-national entity that makes the request for soldiers and which, essentially together with the requesting nations, foots the cost of deployment and operations. Within the internal affairs of Ghana, as a practical matter, the political decision-making process is dictated by the Constitution of Ghana, international treaties, foreign policy, and bilateral agreements, all of which are largely under the control of the civilian authorities. The cabinet of the current civilian government of Ghana, like the past or future ones, is a restricted entity where not every minister of state is a cabinet member, and therefore, not every elite military officer is a member or even a guest or an ad hoc member. Although the Security and Intelligence Agencies Act 2020 (Act 1030) allows for the National Security Council to be made up of a designated list of both military and commanding staff of other security agencies as well as civilian entities, Clause 1 (1) (3) of Act 1030 states that: “a person invited to participate in the deliberations of the Council under subsection (2) shall not vote on a matter for decision before the Council”. Participation in decision-making is not by rank or status but by Constitutive prescription. Notice also that Article 210 (3) of the 1992 Constitution prescribes that “the Armed Forces shall be equipped and maintained to perform their role of defense of Ghana as well as other functions for the development of Ghana as the President may determine.” The reason for this specific inclusion and control mechanism in the Constitution of Ghana is that in the past when the leadership of the nation involved the Ghana Armed Forces in disaster emergency duties, that act alone was a major contributory factor in the military intervention of 1972 that ushered in a new military-led government (Ba-Taa-Banah, 2019, pp. 201–202). Some of the professional elite felt that getting involved in national safety and development matters, such as restoring and rehabilitating national assets destroyed by rainfall and water run-off, was not the military’s function. However, such an understanding of the military’s role was patently flawed.

This is again another major indicator (i.e., the political decision-making process) of the Concordance theory, which does not fit the situation in Ghana and many of the nations in Sub-Saharan Africa’s common law jurisdictions. Today in Ghana, it is common knowledge that some members of the professional corps are seconded to critical national institutions to work in quasi-civilian capacities, including the Ghana Revenue Service, Foreign Affairs, and many more as defense attaches. In this sense, those officers seconded to those institutions are involved in the day-to-day decision-making processes of those entities. In this situation, those attachés have been more or less “civilianized” or co-opted into bureaucratic functions, which may be outside or in line with their military SOPs or specialties. This does not mean that Huntington was afraid of happening to the military, and against which he admonished society against engaging the military in civilian roles was going to happen. Granted, such kinds of assignment may bring the military into “Subjective civilian control,” thus “making them the mirror of the State,” which happens in Ghana (Huntington, 1957, pp. 83–84; Taylor, 1957, p. 165). The fact is that military attachment to public institutions is not a mere political decision-making event. However, it is more administrative and operational to offer training opportunities to the professional soldier, as recommended by Huntington, about how things work in real government situations. The competencies gained from such experiential learning during the attachment can be returned to the barracks to integrate into military operations. Although aspects of Concordance and the critical part of the Separation model are present in the modalities of the decision-making processes regarding national security matters in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa, no one model describes the design of the Civil-Military Relations in Ghana and in many other Sub-Saharan African nations better than the Constitutional basis of Civil-Military Relations.

Recruitment Method

The third of Schiff’s indicators was or is the recruitment method as evidence of the integration of Civil-Military Relations. It appears this idea or suggestion of the method of recruitment into the Armed Forces being indicative of concordance between the civil and military administration is neither here nor there. For example, the recruitment modalities of a huge company like Facebook or Meta, no matter how fair it may be, are not a good measure of whether that company cares about the privacy of its users. In the same vein, the recruitment method of the Ghana Armed Forces, whether based on regional representation or not, does not make it a malleable entity in the context of Civil-Military Relations or that it is an integrated military institution under the control of civilians. Regarding recruitment into the Armed Forces, some are nonchalant about the irregular practices observed year in and year out about the process, such as “protocol placement.” Some are displeased about how a few recruits get in because of their filial and political connections. They worry about the dwindling of the social respect the military enjoys as a whole and are afraid that such malpractices in recruitment could eventually dent the good image of the military. For example, the elite politicians in Ghana have what is called, in local parlance, “Protocol Placement” or assigned quota numbers for recruits from their constituencies to join the security forces with lax entry bars, including the Ghana Armed Forces. No self-respecting professional soldier would admit to such a faux pas or patently wrong conduct. Protocol placement, by any other name, is a corrupt and discriminatory practice well documented in investigative journalists’ annals of military recruitment in Ghana. So, the third Schiff indicator cannot stand the test of legal review in the contest of Ghana due to the inherently unfair manner in which recruitment is done in Ghana. However, recruiting men and women into the Armed Forces of Ghana is considered generally fair, although imbalanced in favor of men. Enlistment into the Armed Forces is voluntary as per constitutional dictate. On its website, the Armed Forces states that it is an equal opportunity employer and that no authorized middlemen are permitted. It lists the general eligibility requirements and provides for the online application process. Information on the Regular Commission for Officer Cadet and Non-commissioned officers provides options for specific SOPs by sector: Army, Navy, and Air Force. On the face of the recruitment procedure, every part of the process is open, transparent, and objectively verifiable. However, there have been reports by investigative journalists that there are other layers of the recruitment processes, which family and political connections dictate, bribery and placement buying, together with the minimally accepted protocol placement enjoyed by so-called senior politicians and government functionaries (Ghana Armed Forces Recruitment for Officer Enlistment, 2022).

Military Style

Anderson (1998, p. 64) referred to the military style in Argentina as what people think about it and the guiding beliefs that drive it. He claimed that style also referred to symbolism and rituals that pervade the relationship between the military and other sectors of society and form part of the history and culture of the nation. It is unclear whether by ‘symbolism and ritual,’ Schiff and Anderson were referring to soldiers’ uniforms, badges of honor and service, or the spunky, clean, shining boots and medals. Clean badges of Honor, medals, and shining boots alone do not ensure professionalism, although a person who cares about his or her appearance is probably one who cares about many things in his or her area of control or responsibilities; it is not always the case. Anderson wrote that such accouterments bestow upon the military a sense of respect, professionalism, separateness, and cohesiveness. The Medals of Honor are not worn in vain or out of wish. They signify ranking, qualification, or accomplishment in career fields and are a form of identification. It goes beyond mere style and is not the same as wearing a pair of Gucci shirts. It does not signify wealth, social status, or qualification. Therefore, if ‘military style’ is an expression to denote public perception or image of the military, then it is fair to say the Ghana Armed Forces are in a comfortable lead and are exemplary compared to other security agencies. Nonetheless, a few miscreants attempt to sink the good image of the Forces from time to time with criminality and poor conduct in public. The public trust in the Military in Ghana is very high compared to other critical institutions or the military distrust of the nation’s civilian leaders (Afrobarometer Institutions and Leadership Survey, 2022).

Discussion

The national models for civil-military relations in Sub-Saharan Africa are largely influenced by the previous negative experiences with the professional soldiers in Ghana, Nigeria, Gambia, and many other African nations as heads of state, corporations, and mundane administrative personnel in civilian entities. The Constitutional model practiced in Ghana allows the civilian authorities to either ask the Armed Forces what they can or cannot do as well as authorize them to perform specific functions under Subjective Civilian Control of the military because the history of Ghana has extinguished the remnants of a mixture of Objective Military Control in favor of Subjective Military Control. Huntington comforts the professional corps with the following admonition, “the maximization of civilian power (because it consists of heterogeneous interests and personalities), “means the maximization of the power of some particular civilian groups” and not all civilians. That, “a high-level objective civilian control has been a rare phenomenon even among modern Western Societies” (Huntington, 1956b, p. 85). Therefore, take heart and work within the system to improve military professionalism among the officer corps and improve Civil-Military Relations across the board. The civil-military “problem” articulated by Feaver sums up the difficulty experienced in this relationship by nations such as Ghana, particularly about maximizing military professionalism as an extension of objective civil-military control (Feaver, 1996, pp. 149–178). Perhaps emphasizing professionalism is a misplaced priority of Huntington’s Separation Model since it does not appear to be consistent with the constitutional dictates of those nations with written, carefully delineated constitutional prescriptions on civil-military relations. Feaver explained that to streamline the apparent conflict. One needed to “reconcile a military strong enough to do anything the civilian ask them to with military subordinate enough to only what civilian authorize them to do.” “This,” he said, “is a special case of the general problem of political agency: How do you ensure that your agent is doing your will, especially when your agent has guns and so may enjoy more coercive power than you do” (Feaver, 1996, pp. 149, 152–153).

In a unitary government system, the fragmentation of the control over the military by civilians is not as dramatic as it may have been in a federalist system with its inherent duplication of authority and functions at both the federal and state levels as it may be the case in Nigeria or the U.S. system. In Ghana, the three arms of the Armed Forces are controlled by the Minister of Defence, who, as is consistent with national and best regional practices, is a civilian who is in charge of administration, budgeting, and promotions of the professional corps; together with the Armed Forces Council, and with the Vice President of Ghana as Chairman of the Council. Such a design does not civilianize the professional soldier as Huntington feared. It only provides for the relationship between the civilian managers and the professional soldiers, which appears to be more aligned with Huntington’s separation theory and the “Subjective civilian control” of the professional soldier from the design standpoint. Perhaps Huntington was more concerned with operational separation than with structural separation. Operationally, therefore, the Constitutional design of the model being practiced in Ghana and elsewhere actually supports integration or a sort of ‘concordance’ rather than separation since both the civilian managers of the Armed Forces and the Professional soldiers invariably work towards the same goal: national security which each party can be proud of. From the legislative and constitutional layout of the modalities for Civil-Military Relations, it would not be easy to apply Huntington’s theory to the architecture of Ghana’s Civil-Military Relations setup. The Ghana Armed Forces are in charge of the organizational management of ground, air, and sea warfare and performative services in collaboration with the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Interior and the Cabinet. The eighteen (18) members of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Interior, together with the elite officer cadre in charge of National Defence, National Security, and National Strategy, as well as the limited number of Cabinet ministers, consist of a restricted and privileged group of critical decision makers in the Civil-Military Relations. There is not much any entity can change about the architecture as it is designed without going against the dictates of the 1992 Constitution. Although superficially, it appears difficult to delineate which aspects of the legislative framework promote “objective civilian controls” and which fall under “subjective civilian controls,” it seems the legal framework has placed, by design, more emphasis on Subjective Civil-Military control in the case of Ghana.

Conclusion

As initially stated, Huntington’s Separation Model and Schiff’s Concordance theory do not apply to the prescriptive, constitutional layout of the Civil-Military Relations in Ghana and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. The history of military interventions in these nations in the past appears to have left negative impressions on the constitutional and legislative framework for Civil-Military Relations. Allowing objective military control in the operations of the armed forces in Sub-Saharan Africa contributes to more autonomy and the desire to do what the military may wish to do. This fear may explain the current Constitutional and Prescriptive model operative in Ghana, which appears to emphasize, at least on paper, a subjective military control under democratic rule.