ALSA 2025 meeting

In many countries around the world, the military is back as a legal actor. This was evident in 2023 when the Secretary General of the UN called for an end to military rule. However the military is not only involved in governance through overt military rule. In many countries, the military is a persistent and long term legal and political actor, particularly in parts of Africa and Latin America as well as across Asia. In the latter, examples range from the role of the military in Myanmar to Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Pakistan. This paper offers an exploration of the military as a legal actor from a sociological perspective. I begin by considering the military as an institution and its distinctive features, which have long been the focus of political scientists and security sector studies scholars. I identify and explain several broad ways of conceptualizing the military and its role in governance: the military as subordinate to civilian institutions; the military as an infiltrator of civilian institutions; or the military as a fourth branch of government. Adding to the military turn in studies of constitutionalism, I then suggest a future agenda for the study of the military and its relationship to law in society that requires us to make explicit our standard assumptions that the state and its legal institutions are civilian. This paper contributes to studies of constitutions in authoritarian regimes and to studies of constitutionalism in the Global South.