The Army As 'neutral Power': Or Transitology As a Schmittian Paradigm?

The founding theoretical scheme of transitology establishes a strategic place to the “neutral power” (Juan J. Linz 1978). The process which underlies the breakdown of democratic regimes, as modeled by Juan J. Linz, is broken down according to the following sequences : (i) faced with the threat of ‘’access to power’’ or ‘’destabilization” of ‘’extremist parties’’ whose ‘’politics’’ makes ‘’confused’’ the ‘’boundaries” between “semi-loyalty and disloyalty’’, the army as ‘’neutral power’’ withdraw their support to the legal democratic government deemed ‘’ineffective’’ and now hardly any more legitimate; (ii) to confront the “crisis situation” or even “pre-civil war”, they publicly identify with the “state” or the “nation’’ rather than the “regime”; (iii) faced with the “insolvable problem” which essentially constitutes the “restoration of public order in a democratic framework”, the “neutral power of the state” require “immediate decisions”; (iv) what follows in turn the “abdication of responsibility” of the ‘failed leadership”, “loss”, “vacancy” then the “transfer of power” to “ademocratic institutions” of the Constitution or the “civil war”.

This model of “changes in the regime” by means of a “transfer of legitimacy” is all the more reminiscent of that developed by Carl Schmitt as Juan J. Linz articulates it with the “decisionnist” scheme.

Scholarship tracking the surreptitious propagation of Carl Schmitt’s thought have enjoyed a craze that has not diminished since the 1980s. A sector of political science, however, escapes this intellectual endeavor. Yet, it is one of those which has enjoyed the most remarkable institutional growth and reached significant political influence since the 1980s: transitology.

Although having highlight the multiple shortcomings of this fashionable paradigm, criticism seems to have neglected the Schmittian stratum which underlies this territory.

This communication intends to contribute to filling this double omission by revealing the dissemination of the Schmittian ammunition of “pouvoir neutre” in transitology.