A Comparative Conceptualization of Civil-Military Relations

1980 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Albright
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
The Other ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Individual Country ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Alternative Conceptualization ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Dividing Line

Since the late 1950s, discussion of civil-military relations has taken place largely within one general conceptual framework. According to this theoretical perception, military and civilian authorities constitute two distinct groups (although they each consist of a variety of subgroups), and relations between them are inherently conflictual. What keeps the conflict within bounds is subordination of the officer corps to civilians except on matters requiring military expertise—i.e., civilian control. Shifts in civil-military relations, moreover, are a function of the degree of effectiveness of civilian control. A close examination of the experiences of the sixteen communist states indicates that these propositions lack comparative validity. It also suggests an alternative conceptualization of civil-military relations. Such relations can be thought of in terms of a continuum, with cooperation at one pole and conflict at the other. Where an individual country falls on that continuum at any time depends on a number of specific variables, of which the sharpness of the dividing line between military and civilian authorities is one. Modifications of civil-military relations can result from changes in any of these variables.

After Military Rule in Europe: Spain, Portugal, and Greece

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltan Barany
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Secondary Case ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Military Relations

This chapter focuses on the cases of Spain and Portugal. After decades of authoritarianism, placing the Spanish military under civilian control proved to be a relatively straightforward and brief process. The transformation of Portuguese civil–military relations, on the other hand, was more contentious, took far longer, and did not succeed as completely as Spain's. Greece, the secondary case in this chapter, had a much shorter but more intense experience with praetorianism; its return to democracy and democratic civil–military relations was quick albeit not without some shortcomings. The chapter then assesses the influence of international organizations, particularly NATO, on the democratization of the three states and their defense establishments.

The Paradoxes of Huntingtonian Professionalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-40
Author(s):  
Risa Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Objective Control ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Military Activity ◽  
Civilian Authority ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Professionalism

Samuel Huntington’s objective control model of civil-military relations has had profound effects on contemporary norms of military professionalism. Huntington anticipated that objective control, premised on a clearly defined division of responsibility between the military and civilians, would create an apolitical ethos among officers. The military’s apolitical character then would ensure its deference to civilian authority and reinforce its professional character. The approach would also enable the military to cultivate expertise in the “management of violence” and guarantee its effectiveness in armed conflict. Those norms, however, are more complex than is sometimes appreciated. They exhibit four paradoxes, producing the very behaviors and outcomes they aim to prevent: they can promote actions and mindsets within the officer corps that work to facilitate political behavior, subvert civilian control of military activity, compromise strategic effectiveness, and even undermine some aspects of military professionalism itself.

An American Crisis in Civilian Control and Civil-Military Relations?

1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-182
Author(s):  
Peter D. Feaver
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Correct Answer ◽  
American History ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The Other ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Who décidés and what do they gct to décidé?1 This is the central normative question in civil-military relations theory, and disagrccment over the correct answer is behind much of what passes for the currcnt ‘crisis’ in American civil-military relations. So far. the American answer appears to havc solved tire problem that prcoccupies most comparative civil-military relations theorists: how to keep the military from taking over the governmcnt. Yct American history is rife with civil-military conflict because the American answer Icaves unresolved the other problem inhérent in the civil-military relationship: finding the proper division of labor belween civilian and military institutions, cspccially on use of force decisions.

Erosion of Civilian Control in Democracies: A Comprehensive Framework for Comparative Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402198975
Author(s):  
Polina Beliakova
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Intrastate Conflict ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Large N ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Comprehensive Framework ◽  
The Military ◽  
New Framework

Civilian control of the military is a fundamental attribute of democracy. While democracies are less coup-prone, studies treating civilian control as a dependent variable mostly focus on coups. In this paper, I argue that the factors predicting coups in autocracies, weaken civilian control of the military in democracies in different ways. To capture this difference, I advance a new comprehensive framework that includes the erosion of civilian control by competition, insubordination, and deference. I test the argument under conditions of an intrastate conflict—a conducive environment for the erosion of civilian control. A large-N analysis confirms that while intrastate conflict does not lead to coups in democracies, it increases the military’s involvement in government, pointing to alternative forms of erosion taking place. Further case study—Russia’s First Chechen War—demonstrates the causal logic behind the new framework, contributing to the nuanced comparative analysis of civil-military relations across regimes.

scholarly journals Coup-Proofing and Civil War

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Koga Sudduth
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
The Other ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Future ◽  
Face Threats ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Political leaders face threats to their power from within and outside the regime. Leaders can be removed via a coup d’état undertaken by militaries that are part of the state apparatus. At the same time, leaders can lose power when they confront excluded opposition groups in civil wars. The difficulty for leaders, though, is that efforts to address one threat might leave them vulnerable to the other threat due to the role of the military as an institution of violence capable of exercising coercive power. On one hand, leaders need to protect their regimes from rebels by maintaining strong militaries. Yet, militaries that are strong enough to prevail against rebel forces are also strong enough to execute a coup successfully. On the other hand, leaders who cope with coup threats by weakening their militaries’ capabilities to organize a coup also diminish the very capabilities that they need to defeat their rebel challengers. This unfortunate trade-off between protection by the military and protection from the military has been the long-standing theme in studies of civil-military relations and coup-proofing. Though most research on this subject has focused primarily on rulers’ maneuvers to balance the threats posed by the military and the threats coming from foreign adversaries, more recent scholarship has begun to explore how leaders’ efforts to cope with coup threats will influence the regime’s abilities to address the domestic threats coming from rebel groups, and vice versa. This new wave of research focuses on two related vectors. First, scholars address whether leaders who pursue coup-proofing strategies that weaken their militaries’ capabilities also increase the regime’s vulnerability to rebel threats and the future probability of civil war. Second, scholars examine how the magnitude of threats posed by rebel groups will determine leaders’ strategies toward the militaries, and how these strategies affect both the militaries’ influence over government policy and the future probability of coup onsets. These lines of research contribute to the conflict literature by examining the causal mechanisms through which civil conflict influences coup propensity and vice versa. The literatures on civil war and coups have developed independently without much consideration of each other, and systematic analyses of the linkage between them have only just began.

scholarly journals The Degree of Military Political Autonomy during the Spanish, Argentine and Brazilian Transitions

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Zaverucha
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Military ◽  
Democratic Country

The state of civil–military relations in the world, especially in the Third World, is very well summed up by Mosca's statement that civilian control over the military ‘is a most fortunate exception in human history’.All over the globe, the armed forces have frequently preserved their autonomous power vis-à-vis civilians. They have also succeeded in maintaining their tutelage over some of the political regimes that have arisen from the process of transition from military to democratic governments, as in Argentina and Brazil. Spain is a remarkable exception. Today, Spain, despite its authoritarian legacy, is a democratic country. The constituted civil hierarchy has been institutionalised, military áutonomy weakened, and civilian control over the military has emerged. Spain's newly founded democracy now appears quite similar to the older European democracies.

Analysing Chinese Civil–Military Relations: A Bottom-Up Approach

2018 ◽  
Vol 234 ◽  
pp. 377-398
Author(s):  
Sofia K. Ledberg
Keyword(s):  
Professional Autonomy ◽  
Political Control ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Organizational Perspective ◽  
Active Service ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Military Work

AbstractThis article examines Chinese civil–military relations using a bottom-up analytical approach and hitherto untapped sources, including interviews with military personnel in active service. It argues that traditional approaches to political control, which generally interpret the changing political–military relationship through military professionalism and institutional autonomy, miss out on important aspects and may generate erroneous conclusions. Here, focus is instead on the professional autonomy of the Chinese officer corps. Through an empirical study of the organization of military work at two of China's top military education institutes, the article illustrates how professional autonomy and direct political control vary, both between hierarchical levels and issue areas. This highlights the multidimensionality of both control and professional manoeuvrability and underlines the fruitfulness of including an intra-organizational perspective in order to reach better informed conclusions about political control and civil–military relations in today's China.

The Control-Effectiveness Framework of Civil–Military Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florina Cristiana Matei ◽  
Carolyn Halladay
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Security Sector ◽  
Control Effectiveness ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Law Enforcement Officials ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Civil–military relations—particularly the principles and practices of civilian control of the security sector—have changed significantly since the 1990s as more and more states around the world seek to consolidate democracy. The scholarly focus and the policy that it informs remain stuck in a mid-20th-century model, however. While civilian control remains central, this civilian oversight must, itself, uphold the requirements of democratic governance, ensuring that the uniformed forces are well integrated into the democracy that they are sworn to protect. Moreover, this democratic civilian control also must ensure the effectiveness of the security sector in the sense that soldiers, law enforcement officials, and intelligence agencies can fulfill the range of their missions. Thus, democratic civilian control requires ongoing attention from both the civilian and the military sides.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-298
Author(s):  
Risa Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Military Effectiveness ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Military Activity ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

The concluding chapter synthesizes insights from the individual chapters, identifying six overarching lessons: civilian control of the US military is complex and understudied; norms are essential for healthy civil-military relations; the relationship between society and the military is less than healthy; partisanship is corroding civil-military relations; public scrutiny of the military is essential to military effectiveness; and the fundamental character of civil-military relations is changing. In turn, it proposes several questions for future research, suggesting that more could be known about public accountability of military activity; the nature and measurement of military politicization; and changing actors and roles in civil-military relations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document