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One of the postulates of systems theory is the tendency of any system to seek a stable state and avoid chaos. Stability is associated with overcoming crises, which are considered obstacles to development. Crises can serve various functions: destructive, threatening the viability of the system; destructive, leading to further development; and crises that are merely disr uptions of equilibrium. In the context of transitioning from repelling armed aggression to ensuring military security in the post-war period, it is appropriate to describe the crisis phenomena and situations of the recovery period, which encompass the real crises of the recovery period. Special attention should be paid to the classification of crises, modeling their development, establishing crisis communications and decisionmaking in crisis conditions, developing state policy and crisis response strategies, as well as devising methods for crisis prevention. Situation centers play a key role in forecasting the security situation, preparing stabilization operations, and coordinating the actions of various security and defense structures. Their tasks include conveying decisions to personnel and the local population, organizing management and interaction, informing about the development of events, and controlling the execution of decisions. The centers also collect and analyze operational information for timely response to crisis situations. In legal science, the concept of a "crisis of the recovery period" is not widespread, but it may be useful for describing emergencies in the post-war period. The definition of such crises should consider the specific impacts of hazardous factors on national interests. The modern concept of national security of Ukraine envisages the integration of various security sectors, including economic, political, social, and legal aspects. According to legislation, the national security system in the recovery period should be an organized set of entities united by common goals and tasks regarding the protection of national interests. These entities participate in military-civil relations, coordinate their actions, and develop crisis response strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to growing efforts to explain when nonviolent resistance campaigns emerge in autocratic regimes. Building from a novel framework for distinguishing civil-military relations in autocracies, it contends that regimes in which military and political leaders engage in a 'grand bargain' generate opportunity structures that are especially amenable to nonviolent resistance. Militaries in these regimes exhibit distinctive characteristics – they are corporate, cohesive institutions as opposed to fragmented in structure and also wield political influence in regime institutions. Consequently, these militaries are especially inclined to care about their societal reputations and to retain their institutional independence from the regime's political leaders. These factors together can lessen expectations among activists that the military will repress protests and increase the odds of elite splits in the face of mass movements. They also render the military more receptive to nonviolent protest tactics. We operationalize the concept of grand bargains with indicators from three datasets on civil-military relations and autocratic regimes. We then test the argument quantitatively using data on the onset of nonviolent resistance campaigns, as well as events-level data on nonviolent resistance campaigns. The findings support claims that civil-military grand bargains make nonviolent resistance in autocracies more likely, contributing to scholarship on this vital topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Brazilian Armed Forces have had a prominent role in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We take this participation as an entry point to confront traditional assumptions of studies on civil-military relations and militarization, investigating a particular claim used to justify the mobilization of the Brazilian military in health-related activities: their credentials in a managerial expertise in logistics. In doing so, we argue that there is an ongoing re-articulation in the discursive regime used to justify their expansion of roles—not one anchored on the efficiency in the use of violence associated with a "war ethos" specific to the military professional, but another, grounded on a managerial expertise to efficiently procure, manage and distribute resources across the national territory, especially in contexts of "crisis." We claim that the historical transformation of such discourse is a particular expression of global processes that have historically vested "managerial expertise" with political authority to solve social problems in critical situations. We also contend that this managerial dimension has been largely neglected in the critique of militarization articulated in traditional and contemporary civil–military relations studies. In light of these processes, this article seeks to contribute to critical work regarding the conditions for and effects of the expansion of military roles under the regime of justification here analyzed, thereby stimulating us to rethink the assumptions upon which militarization can be problematized in the contemporary period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the return to democracy in Argentina, the definition of new roles and missions for the armed forces became imperative in order to establish civilian authority over the military and contribute to the consolidation of the democratic regime. After seven years of military dictatorship (1976–1983), the transformation of repressive and war-prone armed forces into law-abiding and peaceful ones was needed to achieve three key political goals: To strengthen the newly restored yet weak rule of law, to rebuild the country's battered international image, and to help professionalise an ill-reputed military. This article argues that since the return to democracy in 1983, successive governments have pursued these goals by linking issues traditionally falling within the military and security realm to the country's external agenda. Building upon the defence diplomacy literature – that is, the use of defence and military cooperation as a diplomatic tool – the article develops a conceptual framework to apply to the Argentine case, focussing on how defence diplomacy is developed in three stages which we conceptualise as inward-looking, outward-looking, and symmetrical military-to-military relations. Overall, we contend that defence diplomacy – though still a recent and weakly systematised concept in the field – is a useful tool which should be taken into account when analysing the democratic transitions and the pursued civilian control over the armed forces in Global South countries like Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While far from ideal, civil-military relations in Mexico in the second half of the twentieth century stood apart from the Latin American trend towards military government and dictatorship. Over the course of the last three decades, however, drug-trafficking, organised crime and high levels of violence and insecurity have deeply transformed this historical pattern with Mexico experiencing a clearcut process of militarization and becoming part of a broad Latin American trend. This article investigates the forces behind and the features of the remarkable political and ideological turnaround with respect to Mexico's military and militarization. To provide proper context, it first examines the evolution of civil-military relations in Mexico during the era of PRI dominance (ca. 1945-ca. 1985) and the subsequent challenges of a democratic recasting of civil-military relations. It then studies how from the 1990s onwards drug trafficking (and its mutation into organised crime) and an escalating security crisis affected civil-military relations. The last section critically examines the unprecedented promotion of military roles and prerogatives during the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024). The conclusion argues that the shifting relations between civilians and soldiers in Mexico are likely to weaken civilian control over the military and hence risk democratic backsliding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the armed forces in Latin America is characterized by their participation in multiple internal missions. These range from security functions to the provision of social, educational, and public services, among others; their role also involves providing emergency relief. However, some of the armed forces involved in this type of mission do not have specialized units or corps. This poses obvious problems not only from a technical and operational point of view, but also from the perspective of civil-military relations and the definition of the roles of armies. Some Latin American countries have looked to the Emergency Military Unit in Spain as an example to follow for the implementation of a civil defense model based on specialized military resources. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold. First, it seeks to explain that the militarization of emergencies does not involve expanding the use of force but that it can become a "wildcard" policy tool instead. Second, it intends to show how the apparent success of the Spanish Emergency Military Unit resulted from some—not always positive—lessons that can be replicated in the armed forces in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since modern warfare is not only tanks, planes and soldiers, but also a total war between nations, their current and potential economies, their material forces and mental capacities, planning a war comes down to the creation and organization of the country’s overall combatant potential for military use. After the end of the War of Independence and the establishment of the State of Israel, approximately 160,000 Arabs remained in its territory. This minority was perceived as a fifth column at that time that could endanger the security of the State. To devise proactive countermeasures, the IDF Planning Department began discussing what steps should be taken regarding the Arab minority in the case of future war to neutralize this potential threat. The basic principles, which were later formulated into strategic and operative plans of action, were also influenced by the understanding that Israel is a democratic State, and that there are constraints and political considerations bounding these steps. The Planning Department also considered that in some ways this minority could be used to strengthen the national potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether it’s the attack on Pearl Harbor, the outbreak of the Korean War, the start of the Gulf War, or the 9–11 terrorist attacks, the United States has suffered no shortage of strategic intelligence failures in its history. More recently, however, the United States has suffered from a different brand of mishap – a failure of net assessment, where the United States under- or overestimated how our allies would fare in a conflict against known adversaries. This article lays out two competing theories for why these net assessment failures happen – the missing variable hypothesis versus self-delusion. It then tests these theories against three cases of net assessment failures – Iraq in 2014, Afghanistan in 2021 and Ukraine in 2022. This article argues that contrary to popular belief, American net assessment failures are not primarily due a failure to collect the right information or an inability to assess the ‘will to fight’. Rather, American net assessment failures often stem from self-delusion. Because these assessments are often done at the upper rungs of government and include more qualitative judgements about friendly and enemy willpower and proficiency, senior government officials often shape their assessments to best fit their policy preferences. In other words, they fall victim to the confirmation trap. Consequently, if the United States aims to produce better net assessments in the future, then it needs to guard against this bias by professionalizing net assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A venerable History of Philadelphia, 1609–1884 by J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott has been long and widely used by many historians, sometimes with insufficient due diligence, for overall background and context for more specialized topics. An event in Philadelphia involving a confrontation between soldiers and civilians in August 1863, which led to the death of a young farmer, was one such incident where Scharf and Westcott got it all wrong. Unfortunately, their rendition of the event in terms of place and persons involved has been repeated in some more modern histories. Setting the record straight, however, has led to some unexpected benefits which further our awareness of conditions on the Philadelphia home front during the Civil War years; and it could, by extension and expansion, advance our historical understanding of civilian-military relations in other cities in the United States where military camps were placed within urban settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The war in Ukraine has manifested the critical importance of the American alliance network and the swift and effective deployment of necessary military assets. But do citizens of the U.S. allies support the deployment of such advanced, thus controversial, military assets in their countries? To examine this question, we administered two conjoint experiments in Japan, a critical U.S. ally in Asia. The results show the Japanese citizens' strong Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) sentiment: They value the U.S.-Japan alliance per se but do not want those advanced arms (specifically, Osprey and F-35 fighter jets) to be deployed in their vicinity, particularly when the U.S. military operates them. Our study contributes to the literature on alliance politics and civil-military relations by emphasizing the importance of paying close attention to local public opposition as a potential source of instability in global military alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When is the public more likely to defer to elites on foreign policy? Existing research suggests the public takes its cues from co-partisans, but what happens when co-partisans disagree? We argue that the public defers to elites whose prior experiences signal expertise and favorable intentions. Elites with backgrounds in socially esteemed institutions are thus especially powerful cue-givers, even when the core competencies of those institutions are not directly related to the issue at hand. Using two conjoint experiments, we find that the American public defers to more experienced elites generally, but is especially deferential toward elites with experience in trusted institutions: the public defers more to elites with military backgrounds, even when considering non-military issues. The theory and findings suggest that where elites sat in the past shapes how much power they wield once standing in office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some states victimize noncombatants during civil war? Scholars have identified regime type, international norms, and battlefield conditions as important factors explaining variation in outcomes. Here I argue that understanding variation in civilian victimization requires the identification of the institutional interests of those in control of the state. Civilian victimization is likely when the military controls pre-war planning and execution because of the institutional goal of winning wars quickly and efficiently by attacking every major source of enemy power. This often includes noncombatants. Most civilian leaders' institutional goals, however, are centered around governance. Thus, these leaders prefer restraint from victimization because they often believe such barbarity will result in future difficulties for governance. I test my argument alongside others through a binary regression analysis of 103 conflict dyads between 1989 and 2010 and find that the variable for militarily dominated governments maintains significance across model specifications and features the largest effect size of any variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the significance of Turkey in current academic debates, particularly focusing on the country's political process and the authoritarian regime that has emerged in recent years. The special issue of the journal is divided into two parts, with the first part examining the early republican period and the second part exploring the transformations before and during the Erdoganist period. The articles cover a range of topics, including the economic congress of 1923, the role of ship-owners in nation-state building, the impact of secularism on various groups, the establishment of homeland security, the changing role of the peasantry, female employment, the transformation of traditional unions, the foreign policy of the AKP, the evolution of small businesses, the history of capitalism in Turkey, and the rise and decline of the AKP's authoritarian neoliberal order. The authors argue for a broader perspective and historical analysis to understand the current situation in Turkey. [Extracted from the article]

Within the broader context of securitized responses to Covid-19 globally, Uganda experienced an oversized military role, ranging from law-and-order and lockdown enforcement, to managing food-relief supplies, medical operations, and partisan political repression. What explains this excessive militarization? To address this poser, the article draws on secondary sources and key-informant interviews to test the hypothesis that military involvement in pandemic responses depends on pre-pandemic militarism. The findings reveal direct links between pre-crisis militarism and Covid-19 responses, contrary to the view that exceptionality and novelty of Covid-19 informed overly militarized responses. Through pandemic framing and institutional morphing, pre-pandemic militarism foregrounded military roles because Covid-19 provided Uganda's ruling elites with a public health pretext to heighten militaristic rule, clutch the political arena in the context of elections, and deepen military presence in civilian public health realms. This excessive militarization of public health seriously impacts civil–military relations, specifically command and control, reporting and accountability, and resources management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the varieties of civilian praetorianism or the different ways in which civilians enable and support military coups. It specifically argues that by shaping their access to different sets of resources, civilians' proximity to the political establishment and their level of social capital influence their method of support. Civilians linked to the political establishment wield resources better suited for enabling praetorianism through tactics like initiating or plotting coup conspiracies with military officers. Conversely, civilians with high levels of social capital hold resources valuable for consolidating praetorianism through tactics like providing post-coup support and neutralizing anti-coup opposition. Qualitative evidence from three coup episodes in Sudan demonstrates the argument's plausibility. By explaining the important variation in civilian capabilities and resources, this study advances research on civilian coup involvement, which—although understudied—is critical to understanding coup politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can wars truly build states and rationalize their structures? This study focuses on the administrative origin of state-building and finds historical evidence that seems contrary to the idea of "war-making states". As states acquire more territory, they become increasingly vulnerable to setbacks in subsequent military activities, even when facing state failure or demise. Drawing upon geospatial data spanning from 906 to 969 AD during Chinas Five Dynasties and utilizing a difference-in-differences method, our study reveals that (1) states did not progressively expand in size due to continuous warfare, and (2) larger territorial acquisitions were associated with decreased probabilities of state survival, as expanding net territorial areas corresponded to higher likelihoods of state failure in the following years. (3) The relationship between civilian and military systems within a state profoundly impacts the validity of the "war-making states" hypothesis. This study highlights that war makes states more susceptible to collapse if the military system dominates the civilian bureaucracy. Conversely, if the civilian system controls the military and forms a centralized regime, the "war-making states" hypothesis holds true. These findings revise the prevailing hypothesis of "war-making states" in historical sociology, showing that the "war-making states" hypothesis depends on a specific political structure and bureaucratic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The storming of the US Capitol building in January 2021 was a presidential attempt at a self-coup. To make the case, this article reviews elements of the Capitol assault and the events leading up to it, in light of the key conceptual components of a self-coup, and how those compare to attributes of other kinds of attacks on governments. The Trump self-coup will then be compared and contrasted empirically to other self-coups perpetrated by leaders. It is found that what separates successful self-coups from those that fail is whether the military backs the undertaking. Thus, a section is included on US military behaviour in response to Trump's attempts to gain military adherence for his political actions.

Democracies require militaries that protect citizen well-being without threatening to overthrow the government or otherwise jeopardize public safety. The military should therefore be firmly under the command of civilian elected leaders, playing a minimal role in the political process. Previous research examines whether the public thinks such boundaries of civil-military relations should exist, and finds that people can see the military as a check to democratically elected administrations in the opposing party. Here, we ask a parallel question: Does place of residence influence attitudes about the boundaries of civil-military relations? We expect rural individuals and those higher in rural resentment to similarly see the military as a check to a civilian government as previous research suggests that rural residents are resentful towards government and centers of power. Using original survey data, we find that people high in such rural resentment are sometimes more willing to defer to the military. Finally, we successfully replicate findings from Krebs et al. (2023) under a Democratic administration. These results have implications for democratic governance and public support, particularly among facets of the public that have lower trust in government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the intersection of military command and civilian politics during the American Civil War by examining the polemical tenure of Union Army General Thomas Ewing Jr. Topics include Ewing's issuance of General Orders No. 13 that banished civilians from Missouri in 1863 as a tactic to keep guerrillas from relying on countryside farms for necessities, how the press covered Ewing's policy, and the history of the fraught relationship between U.S. military and civilian authority.

At a time of heightened sensitivity to the military’s role in national security and domestic politics, senior officers are more likely than ever to “play the neutral card” – i.e. to act in ways that simply emphasize their supposedly apolitical role. Two of the dominant schools of civil-military relations theory insist that this is virtually the only card officers can play, positing in effect that any political influence by officers on policy-making is inappropriate. However, a third tradition has long argued the opposite: officers do and should engage in consistent dialogue with civilian principals in the hope of producing better policy outcomes. This article adjudicates between the three perspectives, finding that while the third perspective is most persuasive, it too suffers from serious limitations. We provide a new perspective on how senior officers influence their political environments, highlighting their power and the range of options open to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advancements in Industry 4.0 and the global demand for sustainable energy, power electronics devices are emerging as pivotal components for modern industrial, transportation, and energy delivery. Ensuring the security of these devices is of paramount importance for safeguarding the reliable operation of critical systems against any threats. In recent years, the issue of intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI) attack and their related countermeasures have gained widespread attention in both military and civilian power electronics sectors. Here, a review of IEMI in power electronics is provided. Starting from the electromagnetic compatibility standards, the test setups for evaluating the device immunity are introduced. Due to different attack modes and propagation paths, IEMI illuminations are typically categorized into conduction and radiation, where their susceptibility studies, applications, and defence strategies are discussed, respectively. Finally, the existing challenges, ongoing trends, and future topics in this field are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) and their plans for a coup d'état in France during the Algerian War. The OAS developed two plans, Coup-de-Poing and Paso-Doble, to seize power in France. These plans involved military and civilian actions, propaganda, and psychological warfare. The OAS's use of Marxist tactics, military uniforms, and totalitarian methods is highlighted, showcasing the organization's extreme ideologies and revolutionary aspirations. Ultimately, the OAS's dream of overthrowing the de Gaulle regime was never realized, as their resources and support dwindled after the Algerian War ended. [Extracted from the article]

All coups seek to topple the political leadership, but they differ in terms of their leaders. While soldiers spearhead a majority of coups, a small number is led by civilians. And whereas high-ranking officers are the largest group among coup leaders, mid- and low-ranking soldiers account for a substantial share of putsches. Several datasets have recently offered data on the identity and political aims of coup leaders, to study the origin and outcome of different types of coups. However, these datasets have important limitations in their scope and how they address differing organizational structures of militaries across countries and time. This article therefore introduces a novel dataset on the identity of the leaders of 474 coups from 1950 to 2020 that distinguishes between coups led by civilians and military officers, as well as between coups by junior, mid-ranking, and senior officers. We discuss how the dataset complements previous data, present patterns across time and space, and show that successful and failed coups by senior, mid-ranking, and junior officers entail different prospects for post-coup democratization. The article underlines the importance for refined empirical measures and theoretical arguments in coup research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of retired general officers endorsing political candidates during elections. Topics include the increasing prevalence and public attention of these endorsements, the debate over whether such endorsements harm civil-military relations, and the need for further research to understand how these endorsements affect the perception of military non-partisanship and the profession overall.

The Middle East and North Africa, of which the southern and eastern Mediterranean sub-region constitutes the bulk of the population and territory, is the world's most securitized region. It is also the leading recipient of security assistance but provides the least security of any global region. A related paradox is that this region, the states of which are the world's least democratic, receives the bulk of its security assistance from democracies. This article draws upon the causes and consequences of these two paradoxes to investigate relationships between securitization, security systems, and insecurity in the Mediterranean and broader MENA region. These paradoxes are products of historical legacies and limited access orders that characterize the region's political economies. They are key drivers of 'Faustian Bargains' between providers and recipients of security assistance and the costs of those relationships. The article concludes with a review of proposals to improve the balance of costs and benefits of SA, recommending a dual strategy of seeking to reform recipients' civil–military relations while changing military roles and responsibilities of both partners in security assistance relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Modern Warfare" discusses the evolving nature of warfare in the global context, focusing on conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. It highlights the challenges faced by the international community in finding diplomatic solutions to ongoing conflicts. The text also explores the use of modern technologies such as drones and cyber warfare in contemporary military operations. Additionally, it addresses the importance of military readiness, environmental protection, and European competitiveness in the context of modern warfare. [Extracted from the article]

Disaster response is a pathway for incorporating climate change principles into the framework of the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) nexus. However, the growing military presence in relief operations poses ethical, operational and political challenges. Based on the literature on green militarism and civil-military relations, a critical examination of the military expansion in disaster response highlights its potential to compromise the humanitarian principles underpinning the Triple Nexus. Given the unease already sparked within humanitarian and development circles by the inclusion of the peace pillar due to its association with notions of hard security, the current trend in disaster response may risk inadvertently promoting militarised aid within HDP programming. Focusing on the Philippines as a case study, the analysis enriches scholarly and policy debates on the Triple Nexus from a previously unexplored perspective and aims to open new research trajectories for further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representative opinion polls indicate that members of the U.S. public may hold dichotomous perceptions of their veterans. While the majority of the U.S. public appreciates and honors their veterans, they are also considered to suffer from war-induced trauma and physical disabilities. Victimizing attitudes toward the veteran population may result in stigmatization and a more difficult transition into civilian society. This may be particularly problematic for U.S. veterans who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as this younger veteran population needs to reintegrate not only into civilian society but also into civilian workplace settings. The present study aims to uncover and unravel underlying rationalities that justify heroizing and victimizing sentiments in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. In order to delve beyond socially desirable reporting and cultural norms, in-depth semi-structured interviews with 29 individuals (20 non-veterans and 9 veterans) were conducted. Three themes were identified by thematic analysis: Theme 1 "Individual Understandings of the Deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan" represents an underlying framework that tainted perceptions of Theme 2 "Conceptualizations of war, deployment, and violence" and Theme 3 "Evaluations of the veteran's personality." If the deployments were considered justified, then veterans were heroized, characterized with supreme altruistic traits when compared with civilians. Negative effects on health that were arbitrarily related to deployment experience were classified as short-lived. If the deployments were scrutinized, then veterans were considered as naïve victims of a deceitful government, suffering from long-term health problems. Importantly, as discussions surrounding the legitimacy of the deployments were context-dependent, the participants were able to hold perceptions of veterans as victims and as heroes side by side. In conclusion, the heroization and victimization of veterans may be the result of considering different viewpoints, elucidating diversity and access to equivocal information in an increasingly complex social world. Although the present findings may require further validation, they suggest that changing negative, stereotyping perceptions of veterans may require a coherent rationale for deployments and uniform mission objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Hamas terrorist atrocities of 7 October 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza and northern Israel, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis enlisted in all military units, the meaning of being a warrior and a teacher at the same time has intensified. The military impact on the performance of teachers and educators (men and women) who were called up to serve the IDF entails significant consequences. Though written while the war was still going on, this article will try to examine a variety of implications considering the preliminary data, about teachers who were former combatants and vice versa.This article demonstrates several points of view aboutthat introduce this bond, which particularly characterises Israeli students who intend to become teachers, by using their military skills through their pedagogical work. It also includes their involvement in the Gaza war and its effect on their skills and behaviour as students and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the Sudanese political economy from independence till after December 2018 revolution. The paper commences by examining the prominent aspects of Sudan's economic crisis, positing that its political and economic roots lie in Sudanese political economy since independence, characterized by three main elements: urban bias, accountant capitalism, and military dominance. The study analyzes unprecedented developments in Sudanese political economy after December 2018 revolution, which involve institutional bondage among these three elements. It concludes that these developments manifest in the institutional bondage between the Sudanese military and accountant capitalism, and in the formation of institutional bondage between rural elites, militias, and patterns of accountant capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How strongly embraced within the officer corps is the commitment to supporting and defending the Constitution and to the ethic of nonpartisanship? This article answers that question through a 2019/2020 survey of 1,470 service academy students, including with a list experiment. The results show that cadets engage in what we term "selective endorsement" of norms, whereby they endorse norms as long as they are not in tension with their partisan identities. In particular, the list experiment reveals that when provided an opportunity to obscure their preferences, many cadets supported following civilian orders, even those at odds with democratic traditions—and that partisan dynamics may play a role in determining how they respond. The article has important implications for scholarly research on norm robustness and socialization, as well as practical consequences for civil-military relations in light of ongoing challenges to democracy in the United States today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French Army has not always enjoyed a harmonious relationship with its political leadership. Its sobriquet, the 'Great Mute' is something of a misnomer, as it is an institution that has certainly made its voice heard at several junctures in modern French history. Recently, the two Tribunes des Militaires (soldiers' tribunes) expressed the fear among several retired and active officers and enlisted servicemen and women, that France is headed for 'ruin' and civil war. This study represents the first in-depth analysis of the tribunes, its connections to the far right, putschist pretentions and civil war rhetoric. This article positions these tribunes within the historical context of previous French military political interventions, examines its rhetoric and establishes the extent to which it presents a far-right sponsored call to military insurrection. This analysis is of importance, given the seriousness of the claims made in the tribunes and the central significance of civil-military relations for any state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines why it was important to the modern republican Turkish state, which saw the non-Muslim minorities as a threat to its security and a potential source of fifth column activities, to propose their inclusion in the draft. In order to answer this question, the article explores the issue of the recruitment of the non-Muslim minorities as presented in the official protocols and in writings of the senior Turkish decision-makers who attended the Lausanne conference of 1922–23. The main argument of this article is that the introduction of non-Muslim conscription in modern Turkey was less an act of integration and more a contribution to two broader aims: demographic engineering to remove 'suspect' or 'unassimilable' national and religious minorities, and economic Turkification, which aimed to force transfer of property from non-Muslim into Muslim hands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, militaries have been highly visible elements in the response to health emergencies and in particular disease outbreaks. Although there has been a long tradition of civil–military collaboration in health, COVID–19 saw an unprecedented worldwide use of militaries which occurred within a permissive environment established by narratives of global health, humanitarian intervention and multi-sectorality. This creates a dilemma: militaries will likely be an important element in responding to a major health emergency and this risks not only militarizing health emergencies, but affects the balance between society and the military more generally. Moreover, the response to the COVID pandemic suggested that current emergency planning is often poorly prepared for the use of militaries in health crises, thereby reducing the effectiveness of a response. This article engages with how concerns over the securitization of health have evolved into concerns over militarization, and the question of how militaries might be used effectively in future health emergencies without risking the militarization of health or damaging civil–military relations more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to the analysis about the Spanish Emergency Military Unit in the research note by Pérez et al. in Armed Forces & Society, which emphasizes the efficiency of the Spanish Emergency Military Unit and how it has enhanced the image of the Spanish Armed Forces. We believe that a more critical understanding of the development of this military unit is necessary, as its deployment pitfalls and the literature on civil–military relations were neglected. Consequently, four policy traps are identified: response to civilian emergencies has become a central task of the armed forces rather than an auxiliary role; behind the pragmatism of its employment, there is potential for a worsening of civil–military relations, as highlighted by the scholarly literature; there are serious inefficiencies in its organizational design, related to human and financial resources; and image improvement is an illusion, strongly conditioned by political cleavages, with potential long-term counterproductive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliamentary oversight is a cornerstone of democratic control of the armed forces, but its influence on civil–military relations (CMR) remains underexplored. We argue that parliaments in transitioning democracies face unique structural challenges in developing robust oversight of the military compared to advanced democracies. We developed a typology of three distinctive types of parliamentary oversight and proposed that cooperative oversight potentially offers a solution to structural challenges faced by parliaments in transitioning democracies. In our case study of Indonesia, cooperative oversight promoted harmonious working relations between the Parliament and the military/executive, stabilizing CMR. However, cooperative oversight also stalled civil–military reforms, eroded democratic management of the defense sector, and reinforced an unhealthy dependence on the military to self-regulate and the President's appointment power of the armed forces' commander. Over the longer term, we believe that the Indonesian Parliament needs to incorporate a mix of oversight strategies and raise its institutional capacity to strengthen oversight of the defence sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influx of populism in Europe revived the values of illiberal, authoritarian government. This affects the democratic character of Civil–Military Relations (CMR) in the post-communist countries in particular. We analyzed the development of CMR in Czechia (1992–2022) under the influence of populism (2010–2022). Applying the CMR concept of the shared-democratic-values-perspective, our study provides empirical evidence that persistent shortcomings in formal institutional and informal socialization of Czech officers by values of democracy open a dangerous back door for spreading the values of military populism in the Czech Armed Forces. We argue that such development in the last 10 years has resulted into a formation of illiberal alliances between populist leaders and the military elite and poses a risk of the army being misused to politically support the authoritarian populist government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing theories of interaction between Congress and the Department of Defense (DOD) focus on elite-level principle-actor problems. However, the Department, as one of the most popular institutions in the United States, also has significant public appeal and maintains an active public affairs arm. This article builds on theories of bureaucratic reputation to argue that the DOD uses its public communications to advocate for its own budget. I leverage computerized text analysis to examine over 40,000 public facing documents published by the DOD since 2005. I find evidence that the DOD changed both the timing and the content of its public-facing communications to strategically argue for its budget. This is true during large budgetary shifts (like the U.S. budget sequester) and during the period of the year that the budget is under debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military organizations are generally defined by a "cult of the offensive." For cyberspace, this gives rise to an empirical puzzle, at least in the United States. What accounts for the early restraint and skepticism about cyber offense publicly expressed by many US military cyber leaders? In this article, I explore the US military's approach to cyberspace as a theory-developing case study. I examine more than a decade of public discourse among senior military leaders about when and how the military should employ cyber force. I argue that, in the formative years of US military cyber organization, the military's predisposition to the offense was challenged by other cultural and institutional influences, especially from the signals intelligence and strategic nuclear communities. Moreover, this influence shaped the public discourse even after US military cyber organizations gained greater autonomy and turned toward more objectively offensive strategies. This suggests implications for theory and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students' relations with postindependence Ghanaian military regimes have generally been portrayed as positive, yet comparative analysis of the relational dynamics across regime types--military and civilian--is inadequate. This article addresses this knowledge gap using a historical content analytic approach based on original archival and interview data. We argue that strategic and group interests ambiguously influenced students' entanglement with military and civilian governments, though revolutions initially attracted more support because of their populist political ideologies and development aspirations. This fluctuating pattern of relations, which birthed Ghana's Fourth Republic, implies that students were concerned mainly with national development beyond ideologically oriented regime leanings. The article thus modifies the predominant scholarly view of African youth, which holds that students have aided or been predisposed to nondemocratic governance and political instability., Introduction Soon after the achievement of independence, most African states that adopted semblances of Western democracies succumbed to military and authoritarian regimes (Cabal and Daloz 1999, 5). Besides Botswana and [...]

The military in Latin America has been extensively involved in pandemic relief operations. This paper analyses the impact of militarization of pandemic relief operations on human rights. It argues that not all militarization is equally harmful to individuals in the region. When troops assume responsibilities regarding medical care and logistical support, human rights violations do not follow. When involved in policing the stay-at-home orders, the extent of human rights violations is explained by the level of operational autonomy the military has in public security operations. The more autonomous the military, more likely abuses are to occur. Additionally, military exposure to judicial prosecution for human rights offenses contributes to the explanation. After gathering original empirical evidence from 14 Latin American democracies on military presence in pandemic relief, we draw our inferences from process tracing on four comparative case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador.

This paper examines the special characteristics of the military professionalism of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (Tentara National Indonesia, TNI). TNI, which once held strong political power during the Suharto era, was transformed into a professional military that follows the principle of civilian supremacy and has not been involved in politics since its military reform in 1998. It seems to have changed from a military of new professionalism that dominates the politics of the nation, to a military of old professionalism that focuses purely on defence missions. However, the TNI’s missions are not limited to national defence, as it also carries out non-military missions, such as territorial development (pembinaan teritorial, Binter). This paper uses qualitative data collected through interviews with relevant personnel of defence and security sectors. This paper analyzes the TNI’s extensive non-military missions and its organized structure that are the old system of the Suharto era, sometimes criticized from the framework of conventional, western military norms. As a result, I argue that this old system is effective in conducting operations and that the TNI’s professionalism is neither old, nor new, but what I call hybrid professionalism, which fits the Indonesian history and society.