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Civilian Control over the Military and Democracy.
Conceptual and Theoretical Perspectives Prof.
Dr. Aurel Croissant Paper for delivery at the
Public Forum Civil-Military Relations and
Democratic Stress Lessons from Thailand,
Indonesia, the Philippines, and Myanmar/Burma,
Thursday 1st September 2009, Chulalongkorn
University, Bangkok, Thailand
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Introduction
The question of how to achieve civilian control
over the military remains high on the political
agenda of political reformers in many emerging
democracies. The empirical analysis of
civil-military relations requires thorough
theoretical understanding of what civilian
control is, what the challenges of civilian
control in young democracies are and which
factors influence the success or failure of
democratic civilian control.
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Question 1 What is civilian control?
Civilian Control is that distribution of decision
making power in which civilians alone have the
power to decide on national politics. Under
civilian control, the civilians can freely choose
to delegate decision-making power and the
implementation of certain policies to the
military and the military has no autonomous
decision-making power outside those areas that
were specifically defined by civilians.
Furthermore, it is the civilians alone who
determine which particular policies the military
implements, and the civilians alone define the
boundaries between policy-making and
policy-implementation. In addition, civilian
authorities are entitled and have the capacity to
control the implementation of their decisions,
they possess sanctioning power vis-à-vis the
military, and they canin principlerevise their
delegations at any time.
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Q1 contd

• Civilian control is one pole of the continuum of
  civil-military relations
• Civilian control is a relative condition
• Civilian control is a set of five partial areas
  of decision-making of civil-military relations

Source Croissant/Kühn 2009
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Question 2 Civilian control democracy

• Civilian control of the military is clearly
  possible without democracy, but democracy isnt
  possible without civilian control of the
  military.
• Democracy can be understood as the realization of
  three core values peoples sovereignty,
  political equality, and civil freedom.
• Weak or absent civilian control threatens the
  realization all three core principles.
• Political regimes, in which the military exercise
  a certain degree of oversight over civilian
  politicians in certain areas of civil-military
  relations are incomplete or defective forms
  of democracy under military tutelage.
• A political regime in which the military controls
  elite recruitment and the civilian government is
  subordinate to and exists only at the tolerance
  of the military, cannot be considered a
  democracy.

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Question 3 Crafting civilian control

• How can civilian control be crafted in newly
  democratized nations?
• Theoretical premise the degree of civilian
  control in new democracies depends on the ability
  and will of civilian elites to develop
  appropriate strategies of control over the
  military.
• Six control strategies
• Appeasement
• Monitoring
• Ascriptive selection
• Political socialization
• Counterbalancing
• Sanctioning
• But the strategic choice of civilians is also
  influenced by the structural and situational
  contexts of civil-military interactions.

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Question 3 Crafting civilian control
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Conclusions

• Civil-military research needs to avoid the
  fallacy of coup-ism.
• Civilian control is possible without a democratic
  regime. Democracy, however, is not feasible
  without firm and effective civilian control of
  the military. It is the conditio sine qua non for
  liberal democracy.
• Institutionalization of civilian control in young
  democracies is a gradual process. There is no
  one-size-fits-all approach towards civilian
  control. However, there are a number of lessons
  to be learned from past experiences of other
  societies.

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Conclusions

• Agency matters.
• Structural and situational factors also affect
  availability and appropriateness of control
  strategies.
• Successful crafting of civilian supremacy depends
  on the ability of civilian elites to maintain
  high levels of public support.
• Coalition politics by political elites and good
  democratic governance are crucial parameters for
  the success of military reform in young
  democracies
• Full-fledged civilian control is not possible as
  long as civilians are unwilling to accept a
  politically neutral officer corps and as long as
  there are civilian groups anxious to maximize
  their power by pulling the military into
  political controversies.

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Thank you very much for your attention!
Contact Prof. Dr. Aurel Croissant Institute of
Political Science Ruprecht-Karls-University
Heidelberg Bergheimer Straße 58 69115
Heidelberg Tel [phone] Fax 06221
54 28 96 aurel.croissant_at_urz.uni-heidelberg.
de http//www.croissant.uni-hd.de