New Civil-Military Relations and its Research Agendas

Abstract

This article argues that the Civil-Military Relations field has been subject to three major challenges which are in the process of dramatically redefining our understanding of how the armed services interact with civilian authorities and more generally with civil society, and indeed how it is studied. First, there has been an epistemological challenge that is developing new understandings in our knowledge. At the outset it is important to highlight the plurality of ‘New’ Civil-Military Relations methods, rather than a single theoretical approach. A second ontological challenge is leading to new foci of research, as scholars retarget attention on issues that previously we overlooked. Third, there has been a practitioner and policy maker led challenge, which raises a series of new questions which have hitherto been overlooked notably the effectiveness of policy transfer, the need to better understand the changing circumstances in which war is waged, conditions for successful military engagement and the potential role of conditionally in developmental relationships. This article argues that the combination of these three challenges is creating an intellectual revolution in the redefinition of the field of Civil-Military Relations and its parameters, and there are already early signs that these challenges are moving scholars away from an old set of concerns towards a new research agenda. This article argues that the cumulative effect of these changes has the potential to deliver three developments: first, the possibility of applying new knowledge to ‘New’ empirical and theoretical issues as well as to ‘Old’ civil-military relations issues; second, enhanced opportunities for interdisciplinary research, with the possibility of combining traditions and theories which have not previously been able to relate to or have been perceived to be in conflict with each other; and third, to root the study of new civil military relations in approaches which have stronger theoretical foundations.