Conceptualizing and theorizing civilian control

Abstract

Abstract The chapter lays out a concept of civilian control over the military in new democracies which differentiates and operationalizes five partial areas of civilian control: elite recruitment, public policy, internal security, national defense, and military organization. The theoretical model argues that the establishment of civilian control in new democracies is best explained by the interplay between civilian control strategies and the effects of three sets of conditions that can hamper or facilitate the institutionalization of civilian control: initial conditions, civilian bargaining power, and factors that shape the military bargaining power vis-à-vis civilian authorities. This analytical differentiation allows the systematic integration of an agency-model of civil–military reforms with the institutional and structural explanations that dominate the existing literature. In the remainder of the chapter, the authors discuss the relationship between the survival of democracy and the quality of different partial regimes of the “embedded democracy” on the one hand, and the strength or weakness of civilian control on the other. Two main causal mechanisms link civilian control to the breakdown of new democracies. The first is the supplantment or displacement of a democratic government or regime by the armed forces. The second is the “weak democracy” syndrome, through which the military either partners with civilian elites in the overthrow of democracy or remains a bystander while civilian incumbents move against the democratic order.