The aim of the essay is to asses in a conceptual and theoretical way the role of the military and of the patrimonial power in the non-democratic regimes in comparison with the democratic regimes. The central thesis is that the military power and the patrimonial power are pervasive of politics, because politics is inevitably linked to the exercise of violence or to the threat of its use, and to the resort to power to satisfy private aims. Violence is the main resource attached to the exercise of power conceived as the ability to make someone do something or as the capacity to get something from someone. However, the inclination of political power towards coercion and perhaps repression, and towards its private use can be limited if the political institutions prevent its direct and personal control, as it is in the case of the democratic regimes. Through the process of institutionalization the exercise of political power becomes impersonal and embedded in formalized roles and functions. On the opposite, where the level of political institutionalization is low, as in the cases of the non-democratic regimes, the opportunity for the military power to invade the political sphere is concrete if the conditions are favourable. Similarly, the “private” exercise of power is easier and more probable in low institutionalized regimes, because its exercise is not connected to well-defined and controllable roles and procedures. Praetorianism and patrimonialism are two syndromes of the non-democracies which are characterized by low political institutionalization. In these cases, some “factors of the regime” (a party, a closed bureaucracy, the military body and the apparatus of violence), in various combinations in concrete cases, fill the power vacuum and can succeed in stabilizing the political regime. Nonetheless, this stabilization is precarious and it is short-sighted to exchange the “strength” or “robustness” of the “factors of the regime” as indicators of consolidation of the non-democracies. In the medium-long term the use or threat of violence and the exploitation of privileged links between the power elites and some “clients” creates disaffection and anger in the excluded, placing the condition even of rebellion.
