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Civil-Military Relations

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Handbook of the Sociology of the Military

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Abstract

This chapter summarizes principal phases in the development of civil-military relations over the last century. It emphasizes the development of civilian control in democracies. It also focuses on social and cultural changes in the armed forces and wider society such as conscription, cultural gaps between societies and military professionals and the integration of women in militaries. The chapter also deals with civil-military co-operation in international peace operations. Civil-military relations are context specific and reflect diverse historical and cultural traditions. Adjustment to domestic political and budgetary developments, including parliamentary oversight and public transparency in Eastern Europe, requires an increasing professionalism in armed forces and constant legitimizing of international military interventions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    By “arms” or “weapons”, we understand those instruments of offence generally made use of in war, such as firearms, swords, etc. The term ‘military’, as a sociological category, is interpreted as “an acceptance of organized violence as a legitimate means for realizing social activities. Military organizations, it follows, are structures for the co-ordination of activities meant to ensure victory on the battlefield. In modern times these structures have increasingly taken the form of permanent establishment maintained in peacetime for the eventuality of armed conflict and managed by a professional military” (Sills 1972).

  2. 2.

    As for a history of the sociology of the military see also in this volume the Chapter “Some historical notes”, by G. Caforio and Doo-Hong Seung.

  3. 3.

    According to well-established theories of civil-military relations, “the concept of the military as a permanent establishment maintained solely in support of foreign policy objectives presupposes the development of a civil society based on consensus. In such a society, the armed forces are called upon to cope with domestic disorder only in extraordinary circumstances, this task being relegated largely to civilian police forces. However, the incapacity of party governments to resolve vexing internal problems, including an inability to mobilize the ‘home front’ in support of national goals, has on many occasions led the military to do more than provide coercive power for use against external enemies. Their role in this regard has been especially important in those newly emerging nations whose civil institutions and sense of national identity have not yet had sufficient time to develop” (Ibid).

  4. 4.

    Before proceeding further the meaning of the term ‘professional military’ should be made very clear. It means those, “who pursues a lifetime occupational career of service in the armed forces, where to qualify as a professional, he (or she) must acquire the expertise necessary to help manage the permanent military establishment during periods of peace and to take part in the direction of military occupation if war should break out. Career commitment and expertise, the hallmark of any professional, set the professional military personnel apart from those other personnel in the armed services, who are merely carrying out a contractual or obligatory tour of duty or for whom an officer status primarily represented status as it often did in former times (an honorific, part-time, into which military skill enters only as a secondary consideration)” (Sills 1972, p. 305).”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Moscow’s High School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Vladimir O. Rukavishnikov

  2. University of Bradford, Bradford, UK

    Michael Pugh

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  1. Vladimir O. Rukavishnikov
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centro Interuniversitario di Studi e Ricerche Storico-miitari, Pisa, Italy

    Giuseppe Caforio

  2. Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics (E.So.Ma.S.), State University of Torino Italy, Turin, Italy

    Marina Nuciari

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Rukavishnikov, V.O., Pugh, M. (2018). Civil-Military Relations. In: Caforio, G., Nuciari, M. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of the Military. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71602-2_7

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