Civilian control of the military in new democracies

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter, the authors present their arguments in favor of studying civil–military relations in third wave democracies. Normatively and functionally, civilian control of the military is a crucial institutional prerequisite of the consolidated, “embedded democracy.” For democracy to survive, the power of the armed guardians of state security must be limited by strong institutions of control. Civil–military relations are thus a vital topic for democratization and autocratization studies and international and comparative politics, as well as conflict and security studies. Yet, the importance of the topic contrasts with the scarcity of carefully specified theories and systematic theory testing that would allow to identify the conditions under which elected governments and democratically established institutions succeed or fail in ensuring civilian control of the military. Moreover, studies on civilian control of the military and democracy often fall into the “fallacy of coup-ism,” equating civilian control with the absence of military coups d’état. In contrast, the authors argue that civilian control is best defined as the exercise of the will of the country’s elected leadership over the armed forces: why theories of civilian control should center on civilian leaders as relevant actors who can initiate change in civil–military relations. They argue that the effects of different degrees of civilian control on democratic political regimes should differ by substantive decision-making areas and affect different partial regimes of a democratic regime democracy in different ways. Finally, the chapter briefly introduces the data and explains the structure and contents of the following chapters.