Democratization as a Global Phenomenonand its Impact on Civil-Military Relations

Abstract

The most recent wave of democratization has placed control over military and security forces in the hands of elected officials in more countries than ever before. Despite the implications of this trend for international security, scholarly work on democratization and civil-military relations has tended to focus on purely local actors, interests, and strategies when explaining outcomes. When the impact of global trends is considered at all, the focus has been on imitation effects or structural changes in the international system. This is at odds with the reality that the international community has deliberately created a large number of programmes and institutions to promote democratization. This article argues that global democracy promotion efforts by leading powers, such as the United States and members of the European Union, have propagated a particular liberal understanding of civil-military relations which, in most parts of the world, has clearly privileged civilian control over two other elements of democratic civil-military relations, defence efficiency and military effectiveness. However, in the face of emerging transnational threats, new and old democracies have begun to focus once again on the dimensions of effectiveness and efficiency in their security sectors.