The protests that began in Tunisia in December 2010, and quickly spread across the Arab world, have drawn significant attention to the impact of militaries and coercive institutions on protests and revolutionary movements. The actions of the militaries were a central determinant of the outcomes of the uprisings of 2010–2011. In Tunisia and Egypt the decision by military leaders to abstain from using force on mass protests to suppress them led to the downfall of the countries’ autocrats. In Syria and Bahrain, militaries defended political leaders with brutal force. In Yemen and Libya, militaries fractured, with some units remaining allied to the leader and using force on his behalf and others defecting. In still other states, leaders and militaries were able to forestall the emergence of large, regime-threatening protests.
To explain these divergent outcomes, scholars and analysts have looked to a variety of explanatory factors. These focus on the attributes of the militaries involved, their civil-military relations, the size and social composition of the protests, the nature of the regime’s institutions, and the impact of monarchical traditions. These explanations offer many useful insights, but several issues remain under-studied. These include the impact of authoritarian learning and diffusion on protest trajectory. They also include the endogeneity of the protests to the nature of a country’s civil-military relations (i.e., how preexisting patterns of civil-military relations affected the possibility that incipient demonstrations would escalate to mass protests). Scholars also have been understandably captivated by the aforementioned pattern of military defection-loyalty, focusing on explaining that observed difference at the expense of studying other dependent variables. The next generation of scholarship on the uprisings therefore would benefit from efforts to conceptualize and investigate different aspects of variation in military behavior.
Overall, the first-generation literature has proved enormously useful and laid the foundation for a much richer understanding of military behavior and reactions to popular uprisings in the Arab world and beyond.
Article
Hicham Bou Nassif
Rationality, culture, and structure provide useful insights into military politics by stressing self-centered motivations, norms, and large impersonal forces, respectively. The armed forces can transform popular uprisings into democratic transitions, or, alternatively, uphold the status quo. Furthermore, officers can allow nascent democratic experiments to consolidate, or they can resurrect authoritarianism. Whatever they choose to do, multiple material and ideational factors will inform their agency, and by extension, the political dynamics unfolding in transitional times.
Article
J. Paul Dunne and Nan Tian
The literature on military spending and growth has become extremely large and diverse and has reached no clear consensus. This lack of consensus should not be unexpected, because there are a number of issues that make the empirical analysis of the relationship difficult to undertake and make it difficult to identify the particular impact of military spending on growth. Some of these issues have had relatively little attention in the literature. The historical context can affect the military spending and growth relation, so there is no reason not to expect different results for different periods. There are various theoretical perspectives that can be used in any analysis and numerous channels through which military spending can affect growth, which means that studies can differ in how they specify the models. In estimating models, a range of econometric techniques have been used, which can affect the results. There also remain issues of identification that present problems for empirical analysis. The observed correlation between output and military expenditure is likely to be negative if the system is driven by strategic shocks and positive if it is driven by economic shocks. Improved military spending data and the existence of some shocks, such as the end of the Cold War, is helping in dealing with identification, but it still remains a concern. Overall, more recent studies show that, in general, it is much more likely that military spending has a negative effect on economic growth than was evident in the past. The issues involved in undertaking any empirical analysis on military spending and growth mean that the debate is likely to continue.
Article
Before Papua New Guinea’s independence in 1975, its military consisted of a Pacific Island Regiment under the Australian Army’s Northern Command. In preparation for independence, there was considerable debate over whether the independent country should have a military force. Provision was made for the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) in the constitution, with a strong emphasis on the supremacy of the civilian authority. In the first decade of independence, the PNGDF was called out to assist police in internal security operations, but the priority of its role in internal security was not officially recognized until 1991.
The deployment of the PNGDF to Bougainville to assist police in operations against what became the separatist Bougainville Revolutionary Army involved a heavy commitment of troops to a long-running conflict and was marked by a number of confrontations between the military and political leaders. This culminated in the Sandline affair, in which the PNGDF commander stepped in to terminate a contract between the government and the military consultants Sandline International and called on the prime minister to resign (but did not attempt to take over the government). After the Sandline affair and with the Bougainville Peace Agreement, relations between government and military improved, but several incidents involving PNGDF personnel led Prime Minister Morauta to speak of a “culture of instability” within the PNGDF and to invite a review by a Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group. Confrontations between the military and government, however, have consistently stopped short of attempted coup. The most plausible explanation for this may lie in the localized, competitive, and fractious nature of political power in Papua New Guinea, the absence of a dominant ethnic group, and the difficulties that even a legitimate, elected government has in maintaining law and order and service delivery across the country.
Article
Paul W. Chambers
The history of civil–military relations in Thailand has paralleled the gradual post-1980 primacy of monarchical power over the country. Until 1932, the monarchy ruled absolute across Siam (Thailand). From 1932 until 1980, the military held more clout than the monarchy (though the palace slowly increased its influence after 1957). Since 1980, monarchy and military have dominated the country with the military as junior partner. The two form a khakistocracy: the military’s uniform color of khaki combined with the aristocracy (monarchy). Though there have been brief instances of elected civilian governments, all were overthrown by the military. In fact, Thailand likely holds the record for the highest number of military putsches in the world. Since the death of King Bhumipol Adulyadej in 2016, the clout of the armed forces has become more centralized under his successor and son King Maha Vajiralongkorn. At the same time, post-2019 Prime Minister (and post-2014 junta leader) General Prayuth Chanocha has sought to entrench military power across Thailand. As a result, in 2021, the monarchy and military continue to enhance authoritarian rule as a khakistocracy camouflaged behind the guise of a charade form of democracy. Civil–military relations represent exclusively a partnership between the monarch and the armed forces.
Article
Since Lebanon’s independence in the mid-1940s, its military—the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)—has played a pivotal role in the country’s politics. The political role of the LAF in Lebanon might seem surprising since the Lebanese state did not militarize, and its political leaders have continuously managed to keep their military relatively weak and small. Indeed, in this respect Lebanon has been markedly different from its close neighbors (Syria and Israel), but also from several other Middle Eastern states (especially Egypt and Iraq), where the military, which was large and powerful, was continuously involved in politics. Additionally, both Lebanon and the LAF have persistently striven to distance themselves from regional conflicts since 1949, particularly in relation to the Palestinian issue, albeit not always successfully. Still, and despite these ostensibly unfavorable factors for the military’s involvement in politics in Lebanon, the LAF has played an important political role in the state since its independence. This role, which has been marked by elements of continuity and change over the years, included mediation and arbitration between rival political factions (in 1945–1958, 2008, 2011, and 2019); attempts to dominate the political system (in 1958–1970 and 1988–1990); intervention in the Lebanese civil war (in 1975–1976 and 1982–1984); attempts to regain its balancing role in politics (in 1979–1982 and 1984–1988); and facilitating the state’s postwar reconstruction (since 1991). The political role of the military in Lebanon can be explained by several factors. First, the weakness of Lebanon’s political system and its inability to resolve crises between its members. Second, Lebanon’s divided society and its members’ general distrust towards its civilian politicians. Third, the basic characteristics of Lebanon’s military, which, in most periods, enjoyed broad public support that cuts across the lines of community, region, and family, and found appeal among domestic and external audiences, which, in their turn, acquiesced to its political role in the state.
Article
Paul W. Chambers
The evolution of Cambodia’s armed forces has been incremental yet highly disjointed, reflecting the country’s post–World War II history itself. At the same time, there has been a legacy of military authoritarianism in Cambodia. Using the framework of historical institutionalism, this chapter looks at the evolution of Cambodia’s armed forces across time. The chapter points to a 1979 critical juncture which affected the military’s organizational history. It also stresses that especially since 1997 the armed forces has become increasingly concentrated under the personalized control of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The military in 2020 appears as a mechanism of Hun Sen’s, doing his bidding and following his preferences.
As such the armed forces in Cambodia should be viewed as an interventionist military that has acted as the junior partner in an asymmetrical relationship with Hun Sen. With Hun Sen’s 2018 appointment of his son Hun Manet to command the army, concurrent with being deputy supreme commander of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, it appears as though the military is becoming even further centralized under the Hun family. As a result, although civilian control over the military technically exists in Cambodia today, it is not an institutionalized, accountable form of control, but rather an unofficial, tool of violent power for the Prime Minister.
Article
Florina Cristiana Matei and Carolyn Halladay
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.
Article
David Pion-Berlin
Argentina has moved through two defining eras. The first was one of military coups and dictatorships that repeatedly interrupted democratic periods of governance. The second has been one of uninterrupted democratic rule marked by firm military subordination to civilian control. From 1930 to 1976, the Argentine armed forces cut short the tenure of every democratically elected head of state. Eleven of 16 presidents during this period were generals. Military coups in Argentina were brought on by a combination of factors, including societal pressures, tactical and strategic blunders on the part of political leaders, and the military’s own thirst for power and privileges. Militaries would eventually leave power, but their repeated interventions would weaken respect for democratic processes.
The last coup, which occurred in 1976, marked a turning point, giving rise to an authoritarian regime that spelled political, economic, and military disaster for the nation. So disgusted was the public with the dictatorship’s incompetence and brutality that it discovered a newfound respect for democratic rules of the game. The demise of the Proceso dictatorship helped usher in a long and unbroken period of democratic rule. Still, contemporary Argentine democratic governments have had to grapple with civil-military issues. Notable progress has been made, including the holding of human rights trials, the enactment of laws that restrict the military’s use in internal security, and the strengthening of the defense ministry. Notwithstanding a few rebellions in the late 1980s, the Argentine armed forces have remained firmly under civilian control since the return of democracy. Nonetheless, administrations have varied in their abilities and motivation to enact reforms.
Article
Florina Cristiana Matei
Many African countries are praetorian states in which the armed forces routinely meddle with politics, and hence defy civilian supremacy over the military. Mali—a noncoastal country in West Africa, with a population of 14.5 million inhabitants—is no exception. Since gaining independence from France in 1960, Mali has been a praetorian state, as the armed forces have frequently intervened in politics. As such, Mali has experienced four successful military coups (in 1968, 1991, 2012, and 2020). These coups have been caused by an array of interconnected and often overlapping factors, including the following: state formation and the relationship between the military and state institutions; legacies of the colonial times; the dynamic political and security context in north Mali; precarious state governance; history of military intervention in politics; and ineffective international aid and assistance. Mali’s on-and-off relationship with the military intervention in politics has had both positive and negative effects to the surrounding society. If the 1968 military intervention in politics was nothing more than a replacement of an authoritarian regime with another—equally deleterious to the country and its citizens—the other three interventions clearly illustrate how coups can both facilitate and jeopardize democratic consolidation. Certainly, the 1991 coup led to democratization while the 2012 and 2020 coups arrested democratic progress. As a result, Mali’s political institutions in the early 21st century are weak, corrupt, fighting one another, and incapable of governing while the security situation is perilous, despite more than seven years of external military and regional military presence.
Article
Drew Holland Kinney
Available scholarship on civil–military relations, and coup politics in particular, tends to treat military coups d’état as originating purely within the minds of military officers; that is, the overwhelming bulk of scholarship assumes that the idea to seize power stems from officer cliques. To the extent that societal factors (e.g., polarization, economic decline, party factionalism) explain coups, they merely account for why officers decide to seize power. Most research that discusses civilian support for coups does so within single case studies—almost entirely drawn from the Middle East and North Africa. Building on a vibrant wave of studies that disaggregates civil–military institutions, a small body of recent research has begun to systematically and comprehensively consider the theoretical and empirical importance of civilian involvement in military coups. This perspective deemphasizes the military’s possession of weapons and instead focuses on ideational sources of power. Civilians have more power and resources to offer military plotters than existing scholarship has given them credit for. Civilian elites and publics can legitimate coups, organize them, manipulate information on behalf of the plotters, and finance coups for their own economic interests. In short, to fully understand coups, one must seek as much knowledge as possible about their formation, including where the idea for each plot originated. Such detailed analysis of coup plots will give researchers a clearer picture about the motivating factors behind coups.
Article
Daniel Eizenga
Burkina Faso’s military holds an important place in politics. It has intervened in Burkina Faso’s politics, temporarily taking power seven times, first in 1966 and most recently in 2015. Military officers have long held many of the most prominent political offices, and military coups d’état have been the most common method of transferring political power in Burkina Faso. Military interventions have typically addressed moments of political failure and widespread civil unrest. Political agitation from different groups in civil society has pressured every government that has come to power, and the government’s ability to manage these popular pressures has been a key feature in the military’s relationship with any given regime. This was particularly the case in the 1980s, when ideological divisions within the military resulted in four coups d’état, but it was also of consequential importance during Burkina Faso’s 2014–2015 political transition.
The 27-year rule of Blaise Compaoré set in motion a process of institutional reform that expanded civilian authority over the administration of the military. However, it also saw the rise of preferential treatment for certain units of the military, in particular the presidential guard, which provided protection to the regime during moments of civil unrest until 2014. The gradual liberalization of the political system culminated in unprecedented civil unrest in 2014, and Compaoré was ousted from power in what is commonly referred to as a popular insurrection. The political transition following the events of 2014 led to the first peaceful transfer of power between civilian governments in Burkina Faso’s history and marked a potential shift in the military’s relationship with politics. The military’s political role in Burkina Faso often has been dictated by popular pressures on the political system, but gradual democratic reforms during the 1990s and 2000s helped to inculcate norms of civilian control over the military. While much remains to be seen about the future of Burkina Faso’s military in politics, the opportunity for the country’s political institutions to manage popular pressures on its government may indicate a new era of civilian governance and at least the possibility of reducing the military’s interference in politics.
Article
Jesse Dillon Savage
There has long been concern that foreign military training could increase the coup propensity of recipient militaries. Alternatively, others have held the hope that such training could be used as a development tool to help improve the normative outlook of militaries and increase their respect for civilian control. The primary goal of such training is rarely to improve, or worsen for that matter, civil–military relations in the recipient state. Instead, donor or provider states are usually aiming to strengthen their own security and strategic positions. If there is a relationship between training and civil–military relations, these effects are mostly, then, second-order effects.
The academic study of the issue has often reflected this divide, though many have been skeptical of any effect at all. Along with the theoretical differences regarding the effects of foreign military training, empirical results have been mixed. While some have found a relationship between training and coups, other studies have found the opposite. These divergent results can be attributed to a few factors. First, the field of civil–military relations lacks a solid empirical understanding of the effects of military education and training in general, let alone how foreign military training fits into this. Second, the theoretical arguments lack appropriate refinement. This has led to possible misspecification of empirical models or a failure of construct validity. Finally, most research has failed to account for heterogeneous effects from different donors in different political contexts.
Article
Marcus Mietzner
Indonesia is a highly revealing case study for pinpointing both the conditions under which militaries in postcolonial societies intervened in political affairs and the patterns that led to their subsequent marginalization from politics. It also demonstrates how militaries could defend some of their political interests even after they were removed from the highest echelons of power. Emboldened by the war for independence (1945–1949), the Indonesian military used divisions, conflicts, and instabilities in the early postindependence polity to push for an institutionalized role in political institutions. While it was granted such a role in 1959, it used a further deterioration in civilian politics in the early 1960s to take power in 1965. Military intervention in politics in Indonesia, then, has been as much the result of civilian weaknesses as of military ambitions, confirming Finer’s theory on the civilian role in military power quests.
Military rule in Indonesia weakened first as a consequence of the personalization of the polity built by the leader of the 1965 takeover, General Suharto. After a decade in power, Suharto turned the praetorian regime into a personal autocracy, transforming the military from a political actor into an agent. When Suharto’s regime collapsed in 1998 after being hit by the Asian financial crisis, the military was discredited—allowing civilian rulers to dismantle some of its privileges. But continued divisions among civilian forces mitigated the push for the military’s full depoliticization—once again proving Finer’s paradigm. As post-Suharto presidents settled into the new power arrangements, they concluded that the military was a crucial counterweight against the possible disloyalty of their coalition partners. Thus, under the paradigm of coalitional presidentialism, rulers integrated the military into their regimes and granted it concessions in return. In short, while the post-1998 military is much diminished from its role in predemocratic regimes, it retains sufficient power to protect its core ideological and material interests.
Article
Henrik Laugesen
The classical theoretical civil–military relations (CMR) perspective is traditionally concerned with how to obtain civil control of the armed forces. This theme is preeminent in the writings of Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz, the two most dominant voices in the debate of this subject field since the 1960s. By 2019, the character of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) was heavily influenced, if not determined, by CMR, as CMR seems to be the only constant factor when trying to understand KDF. During British colonial rule in the East African protectorate, the use of force was primarily dedicated to securing the extraction of natural resources from Kenya and maintaining internal security. It was in this colonial context of exploitation and extraction that the KDF was born in 1902, in the form of the King’s African Rifles (KAR). Therefore, to understand the “genetics” of the present-day KDF, one has to understand the political context in which the KDF was born and raised. The surprising point here is that although Kenya has since undergone far-reaching political changes, the KDF still seems to be caught in King Edward VII’s long shadow of colonial repression. The effective, ethnically driven political system and Britain’s military guaranties have dominated CMR and kept an iron grip on the military for more than 100 years.
Article
At first sight, relations between politics and the military in Macedonia, one of the ex-Yugoslav republics that gained independence in 1991, seem to resemble the typical evolution of civil–military relations in other countries in transition. Yet, history in Macedonia is far from straightforward and simple. First, the country’s appearance on the world scene was unique: it was practically a demilitarized state with no army! Apart from that, amid the Yugoslav imbroglio it was known as an “oasis of peace.” Only 10 years later, in 2001, Macedonia found itself on the verge of an ethnic conflict, with a powerless (Macedonian-dominated) military that confronted apparently well-organized Albanian paramilitary forces. In March 2020, Macedonia became NATO’s 30th member state. Yet, the dilemma that affects civil–military relations at both the political-military and societal-military levels has not gone away. Theoretically and practically, any meaningful analysis requires detection of the troublesome aspects of each side of the triangle: state/politics/military/society/ethnicity. Though the society–state dimension is far from inconsiderable, on methodological grounds the analysis that follows is restricted to the other two dimensions.
NATO membership for a transitional country usually presupposes a successful democratic transition, internal stability, and societal consensus over key national values and interests. Macedonia’s case belies that assumption. The Macedonian military has been practically invisible in internal politics, while it has been widely cited as a key asset for bringing the country closer to NATO by direct involvement in military interventions launched by the United States or NATO, starting with Afghanistan and Iraq and extending to the plans for involvement in Mali’s affairs. Behind the façade, there is silent internal strife within the ranks along political and ethnic lines (i.e., the same lines that sharply divide the state and society, challenging the country’s internal cohesion and democratic prospects). In addition, the military has to make do with scant essential resources, while the military officers’ self-respect is severely diminished by the low societal rewards for their profession. Macedonia’s democratic transition is far from complete, since the country is going through a deep internal crisis related to its societal/security dilemma, and the military is just one of the institutions that suffer because of ethnic competition and unprincipled power-sharing bargaining.
Article
Aqil Shah
The military has dominated politics and national security in Pakistan since the decade following independence from British colonial rule in August 1947. The country appears to be caught in a persistent praetorian trap: It has experienced three military coups (1958, 1977, 1999, and an intra-military coup led by General Yahya Khan against President and Field Marshall Ayub Khan in 1969), and each of them was followed by military or quasi-military governments (1958–1969, 1969–1971, 1977–1988, 1999–2007) that have left behind legacies curtailing the authority of civilian governments long after the generals exited power. Scholars have examined the causes of military intervention, the role of the military in democratic transitions, and the patterns of civil–military relations under elected rule, which are perennially defined by military autonomy and weak civilian control.
The military established its most recent dictatorship under General Pervez Musharraf in 1999, which lasted for 8 years. The subsequent transition to civilian rule in 2008 resulted in the first ever transfer of power from the government of the left-of-center Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which had completed its constitutional tenure, to the right-of-center Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N of Nawaz Sharif) in 2013. Bipartisan reforms enacted in 2010 restored the 1973 constitution’s federal parliamentary structure and removed several authoritarian distortions (e.g., the power of the president to arbitrarily sack elected governments) introduced under military rule. In the subsequent 2018 vote, the incumbent PML-N government peacefully yielded power to the right-of-center Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI). Despite multiparty elections followed by executive turnovers, civil–military relations remain fraught and the generals continue to retain their vast prerogatives and reserve domains under elected regimes, including institutional affairs, defense allocations, commercial interests in vital sectors of the economy, foreign policy, nuclear weapons, intelligence, and even civilian administration. Between 2008 and 2017, civilian government made repeated attempts to erode its privileges (e.g., the PPP government’s decision to place the country’s main intelligence agency, the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), under civilian control) and challenge its presumptions of impunity (e.g., the decision of the PML-N government to prosecute Musharraf for “high treason”). The military responded by publicly contesting civilian policies, resisting or rejecting directives, and mobilizing its civilian proxies to destabilize elected rule. In 2018, the generals manipulated the polls to install the pro-military PTI in power. The country’s weak democracy has since mutated into a hybrid regime where formal democratic political institutions mask undeclared martial rule.
Article
Jimmy D. Kandeh
The recurrence of subaltern coups and the involvement of politicians in these usurpations of state power are key features of military interventions in Sierra Leone. The losers of the 1967 and 1996 general elections instigated and/or supported coups that toppled the elected governments, and the coups of 1968 and 1992 also attracted the support of many disgruntled politicians. The country’s first two coups and the 1992 coup were pro-SLPP (Sierra Leone People’s Party) while the 1968 and 1997 coups were broadly supportive of the All People’s Congress party. Collusion between military factions and politicians permeates all ranks of the army but is particularly salient among senior officers, who share the same class location with politicians but not with armed subalterns whose ties to politicians are based not on shared class interests but on patronage and communal solidarity. Subaltern usurpations of state power in Sierra Leone reflect, inter alia, the extent to which senior officers have been clientelized by political incumbents and rendered less prone to stage coups in the contemporary period. Far more likely to attempt coups are armed regulars who, as a substratum, are unclientelizable, malleable, and often unpredictable. That the last three coups (1997, 1992, 1968) were carried out by this insurgent militariat is indicative of how senior officers have been displaced as major coup plotters since the 1960s. The underlying causes of these coups are rooted in state failures, low levels of institutional development, endemic corruption, politicization of the military, and the failure of the country’s political class to deliver development and good governance. Deterring coups in the future will depend as much on what politicians do as on what subaltern factions of the military are planning or capable of doing, but distancing politicians from the military and prolonging democratic rule are critical to reducing the probability of coups. Neither civilian nor military factions of the country’s political class are genuinely committed to democratic governance, but the two most important factors holding the military in check are the relatively long duration of constitutional rule (1998 to the present) and the global community’s hostility to military seizures of power. Four elections have been held since the last coup in 1997, with power twice (2007, 2018) alternating between the two main political parties. Elections are no longer precipitating coups, and the more of them that are held freely and fairly the better the prospects for military disengagement from politics and democratic maturation.
Article
Marian Zulean
Romania has no tradition in militarism despite its history of authoritarian regimes in 20th century. The process of modernization and democratization that started in the middle of 19th century was interrupted for about half a century by the authoritarian regime of King Carol II (1938), followed by a military dictatorship during World War II, and continued with a Communist dictatorship until 1989.
The transition to democracy started in 1990 from a very low level, Ceausescu’s regime being one of the fiercest dictatorial regimes. However, Romania succeeded in building up a functional democracy and market economy with Western assistance that transformed it into a full member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU). One basic conditionality to the admission into NATO and the EU was putting the military under civilian control and building up democratic civil–military relations. Thus, Romania has no history of military involvement in politics. After three decades of transition, Romania implemented a complex mechanism of democratic control of the military. However, issues regarding the incomplete internalization of democratic norms of control of the military, resistance to change through the system of military education, an obsolete national security legislation, and some legacy practices related to rights abuses perpetrated by intelligence services need to be addressed in order to consider Romania a consolidated democracy.
Article
Jan Angstrom and Sofia K. Ledberg
The existence of a clear-cut division between “civil and military” is in many ways a foundation for international law and diplomacy. It is also a given starting point in many studies on current issues relating to war and peace, as well as in historical interpretations of past conflicts. Yet the civil–military dichotomy is not always a useful way of approaching complex matters, and by adopting such a starting point, some issues risk being overlooked. There are numerous historical examples, from the American Civil War, to wars of national liberation ending colonialization, to insurrections shaking political status quo such as the Marxist–Leninist revolutions; all illustrate that neither the agents of war nor the victims fit neatly into one of two clear categories. In a contemporary setting, non-traditional forms of warfare that make use of cyber space or autonomous systems further serves not only to undermine ideas of internal–external security but also to blur the distinction between civil and military. In the everyday making and implementation of policy, these concepts are indeed fluid and the borders between them highly variable, continuously contested, and renegotiated. As concepts, they can be seen as co-constitutive in the everyday usage. Civil and military are therefore best understood as norms, whose contents and interrelationship are contextually determined. At the same time, civil and military are organizational principles of the state, and as such the distinction is, arguably, too important, too deep-seated within the modern state-system, and too engrained in how legal and political order are understood to disappear in the near future.
