Complicating Entanglements: Societal Factors Intruding in the Ghana Armed Forces’ Civil–Military Relations

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X211033010
• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Date: 01 October 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X211033010

Armed Forces & Society

2022, Vol. 48(4) 917 –935

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X211033010

journals.sagepub.com/home/afs

Article

Complicating

Entanglements: Societal

Factors Intruding in the

Ghana Armed Forces’Civil–

Military Relations

Humphrey A. Agyekum

1



Abstract

Scholarly debates on civil–military relations often focus on how the military impacts

society. Adding to the vast literature of civil–military relations, this article examines

how socio-cultural practices and societal developments in the host society affect the

military. Based on long-term ethnographic engagement with the Ghana Armed Forces,

the piece presents empirical observations of how culturally informed practices, such as

begging via proxies (djuan toa), inf‌iltrate the Ghanaian military barracks and affect the

institutions’functioning. The article illustrates how two additional elements, skewed

recruitment practices and the politicisation of the rank and f‌ile, are used as tools by

political factions, such as Ghana’s two most prominent parties (the New Patriotic Party

and National Democratic Congress), seeking to gain control over the Ghanaian

military. The article analyses how these approaches contribute to undermining the

armed forces’discipline and military professionalism and consequently affect the

military institution as a whole.

Keywords

Ghana Armed Forces, civil–military relations, professionalism/leadership, societal

developments, political elite, recruitment

1

Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Copenhagen K, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Humphrey A. Agyekum, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5,

Building 4, 2nd f‌loor, Copenhagen K, Denmark, DK-1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark.

Email: haa@ifs.ku.dk

918 Armed Forces & Society 48(4)

Introduction

In scholarly debates on civil–military relations, the focus has generally been on how the

military impacts society. The excessive attention for the military component in the

civil–military relations has been justif‌ied by scholars citing the armed forces’ability to

use organised violence to generate immense capability to dominate and coerce society

to adhere to their demands (Sørensen & Ben Ari, 2019). Contrary to this common

concern, this article, which features the case of the Ghana Armed Forces, focuses on

how the military is affected by socio-cultural practices inf‌iltrating the barracks (spe-

cif‌ically, begging via proxies and intrusion of politics and cronyism). The impact of the

host society on the military is currently rather undertheorised in the civil–military

relations scholarship. However, this aspect of civil–military relations is of crucial

importance to understand as it can illuminate how military and civilian domains are

interconnected to ‘constitute complex entanglements’(Sørensen & Ben Ari, 2019).

The Ghana Armed Forces, like many militaries around the world, are confronted

with various challenges to their professionalism, such as political interference or

unsound recruitment practices. The study was based on f‌ieldwork with the Ghana

Armed Forces, which comprised of numerous in-depth interviews and observations

(Agyekum, 2019), the article examines the specif‌ic challenges faced by the Ghanaian

military in maintaining its independence and neutrality. The article further scrutinises

critical components of military professionalism, such as recruitment, promotions and

appointments, and how these are affected by socio-cultural and societal developments.

Professionalism here, in line with Huntington, entails specif‌ic vocational characteristics

that include expertise gained through years of extensive training, expertise which is

deployed only in the service of society and corporateness or soldiers’sense of be-

longing (Huntington, 1957,p.11–18). The combination of these elements is essential

for a professional military to fulf‌il its goal of waging successful armed combat

(Huntington, 1957, p. 11). In the case presented here, professionalism entails all the

preceding, while including the Ghana Armed Forces’ability to fulf‌il their constitutional

mandate of providing military security to the state, and at the same time, maintain their

neutrality vis-`

a-vis particularistic political interests.

Literature on African civil–military relations (cf. Baynham, 1978; ‘Bayo Adekson,

1976; Decalo, 1973; Kraus, 1983; Salihu, 2020) primarily illustrates how African

militaries have affected African societies through their assistance during colonialism to

foreign entities and destabilisation of the continent in the post-colonial era, be it through

orchestration of coups, participation in civil wars or support of authoritarian regimes.

Although at independence most African states inherited armies that were deemed apolitical

or at least had an ‘apolitical façade’(Parsons, 2003), a large number of militaries across

the continent did in fact engage in politics in this period. McGowan observes that in the

46-year period between January 1956 and the end of 2001, a grand total of 80 suc-

cessful coups, 108 attempts and 139 reported coup plots in the then 48 independent sub-

Saharan countrieshad occurred (McGowan, 2003,p. 339). In the 21st century,moreover,

14 successfulcoups took place on the Africancontinent (Rabinowitz & Jargowsky, 2018,

2Armed Forces & Society 0(0)