scholarly journals The 2018 Colombian Military Academy dataset

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (23) ◽  
pp. 147-162
Author(s):  
Andres Eduardo Fernandez-Osorio ◽  
Edna Jackeline Latorre Rojas ◽  
Nayiver Mayorga Zarta

This article presents a data set of the population of military students, resulting from a sociological study completed at the Colombian Military Academy (Escuela Militar de Cadetes General Jose Maria Cordova - ESMIC). By analyzing perceptions and attitudes of ESMIC’s students in six areas, namely, socio-demographic characteristics; professional behavior; social patterns; military values; civil-military relations; and integration of women in the military, this data set aims to provide scientific information to assist in the design, implementation, and effectiveness of the National Army of Colombia’s policies. 

Author(s):  
Tughral Yamin

The importance of civil military relations assumes seminal importance in ensuring the success of all phases of a counter insurgency campaign. In the true tradition of the Clausewitzian dictum that war is the continuation of policy and vice versa; Pakistan Army has been employed as a matter of policy in counter insurgency operations in the erstwhile tribal areas. They have also been used in the stabilization operations to bring about normality in the insurgency ridden areas. In fact the employment of Pakistan Army in the stabilization process defies any previous example in any other country. In all phases of the conflict cycle, the military has worked hand in glove with its civilian counterparts. The civil-military coordination (CIMIC) in the insurgency ridden areas has taken place within the framework of the established ground rules of an organized counter insurgency campaign. It would not be unfair to say that the return to normality in the erstwhile FATA has only been possible because of a well-knit CIMIC architecture. This paper briefly explicates the salient points of the CIMIC aspect of the counter and post-insurgency part of the operations in the conflict zones and highlights the importance of this aspect of dealing with insurgencies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2199622
Author(s):  
Sergio Catignani ◽  
Nir Gazit ◽  
Eyal Ben-Ari

This Armed Forces & Society forum is dedicated to exploring recent trends in the characteristics of military reserves and of the changing character of reserve forces within the armed forces within the military, the civilian sphere, and in between them. To bring new and critical perspectives to the study of reserve forces and civil–military relations, this introduction and the five articles that follow draw on two organizing conceptual models: The first portrays reservists as transmigrants and focuses on the plural membership of reservists in the military and in civilian society and the “travel” between them. The second model focuses on the multiple formal and informal compacts (contracts, agreements, or pacts) between reservists and the military.


2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110014
Author(s):  
Holger Albrecht ◽  
Michael Bufano ◽  
Kevin Koehler

This article introduces a theory on military role expansion in emerging democracies and poses a broad question: who wants the military to adopt which role in society and politics? Drawing on an original, nationally representative survey conducted in Tunisia, the article explores people’s preferences for the military to remain a security provider or serve in government and contribute to policing protests. Findings reveal that public support for military role expansion is substantial and varies across political cleavages. We test hypotheses to account for cleavages driven by the country’s authoritarian past versus partisan divides during Tunisia’s transition to democracy. Findings indicate that popular support for military role expansion is driven by anti-system sentiments prevalent in contemporary Tunisian politics: while voters prefer the military as a role model for security provision, non-voters support its enhanced role in politics. These observations have ample implications for the research programs on civil–military relations and the dynamics of democratic consolidation. Tunisia’s experience warrants greater attention to anti-system attitudes caused by people’s disillusionment with democratic procedures. In turn, authoritarian legacies do not appear to play a prominent role during such challenging transitions toward democratic consolidation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402198975
Author(s):  
Polina Beliakova

Civilian control of the military is a fundamental attribute of democracy. While democracies are less coup-prone, studies treating civilian control as a dependent variable mostly focus on coups. In this paper, I argue that the factors predicting coups in autocracies, weaken civilian control of the military in democracies in different ways. To capture this difference, I advance a new comprehensive framework that includes the erosion of civilian control by competition, insubordination, and deference. I test the argument under conditions of an intrastate conflict—a conducive environment for the erosion of civilian control. A large-N analysis confirms that while intrastate conflict does not lead to coups in democracies, it increases the military’s involvement in government, pointing to alternative forms of erosion taking place. Further case study—Russia’s First Chechen War—demonstrates the causal logic behind the new framework, contributing to the nuanced comparative analysis of civil-military relations across regimes.


2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. Feaver

President George W. Bush's Iraq surge decision in late 2006 is an interesting case for civil-military relations theory, in particular, the debate between professional supremacists and civilian supremacists over how much to defer to the military on decisions during war. The professional supremacists argue that the primary problem for civil-military relations during war is ensuring the military an adequate voice and keeping civilians from micromanaging and mismanaging matters. Civilian supremacists, in contrast, argue that the primary problem is ensuring that well-informed civilian strategic guidance is authoritatively directing key decisions, even when the military disagrees with that direction. A close reading of the available evidence—both in published accounts and in new, not-for-attribution interviews with the key players—shows that the surge decision vindicates neither camp. If President Bush had followed the professional supremacists, there would have been no surge because his key military commanders were recommending against that option. If Bush had followed the civilian supremacists to the letter, however, there might have been a revolt of the generals, causing the domestic political props under the surge to collapse. Instead, Bush's hybrid approach worked better than either ideal type would have.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2110068
Author(s):  
Sam R. Bell ◽  
K. Chad Clay ◽  
Ghashia Kiyani ◽  
Amanda Murdie

Do civil–military relations influence human rights practices? Building on principal–agent theory, we argue that civilian–military relations, instead of having an effect on mean levels of repression, will be associated with the dispersion in human rights practices. States where there is less control of the military or more conflict between civilian and military leadership will see a wider range of human rights practices. We test our hypotheses quantitatively on a global sample of countries, using updated data on civil–military relations and find evidence that civil–military conflict and lack of control increase the variance in human right practices.


2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boubacar N'Diaye

ABSTRACTThe 3 August 2005 military coup was Mauritania's best opportunity to turn the page on decades of the deposed quasi-military regime's destructive politics. This article critically analyses relevant aspects of the transition that ensued in the context of the prevailing models of military withdrawal from politics in Africa. It also examines the challenges that Mauritania's short-lived Third Republic faced. It argues that the transition process did not escape the well-known African military junta leader's proclivity to manipulate transitions to fulfil suddenly awakened self-seeking political ambitions, in violation of solemn promises. While there was no old-fashioned ballot stuffing to decide electoral outcomes, Mauritania's junta leader and his lieutenants spared no effort to keep the military very much involved in politics, and to perpetuate a strong sense of entitlement to political power. Originally designed as an ingenious ‘delayed self-succession’ of sorts, in the end, another coup aborted Mauritania's democratisation process and threw its institutions in a tailspin. This only exacerbated the challenges that have saddled Mauritania's political system and society for decades – unhealthy civil-military relations, a dismal ‘human rights deficit’, terrorism, and a neo-patrimonial, disastrously mismanaged economy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2110629
Author(s):  
Kirill Shamiev

This article studies the role of military culture in defense policymaking. It focuses on Russia’s post-Soviet civil–military relations and military reform attempts. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s armed forces were in a state of despair. Despite having relative institutional autonomy, the military neither made itself more effective before minister Serdyukov nor tried to overthrow the government. The paper uses the advocacy coalition framework’s belief system approach to analyze data from military memoirs, parliamentary speeches, and 15 interviews. The research shows that the military’s support for institutional autonomy, combined with its elites’ self-serving bias, critically contributed to what I term an “imperfect equilibrium” in Russian civil–military relations: the military could not reform itself and fought back against radical, though necessary, changes imposed by civilian leadership.


Author(s):  
Marco Jowell

The army has been a central part of Rwanda’s political system from the precolonial period until the early 21st century and is intrinsically part of the construction and politics of the state. Civil–military relations in Rwanda demonstrate not only the central features of transitioning a rebel group to a national defense sector but also how some states construct their armed forces after a period of mass violence. Since the civil war and genocide in the early 1990s, the Rwandan military has been the primary actor in politics, the economy, and state building as well as in regional wars in central Africa and the Great Lakes region. Practical experiences of guerrilla insurgency and conflict in Uganda and Rwanda, postconflict military integration, and the intertwining of political and economic agendas with the ruling party have shaped civil–military relations in Rwanda and have been central to how the Rwandan defense sector functions. Contemporary Rwandan civil–military relations center around the two elements of service delivery and control, which has resulted in the development of an effective and technocratic military in terms of remit and responsibilities on the one hand, and the creation of a politicized force of coercion on the other hand. The military in Rwanda therefore reflects the pressures and dynamics of the wider state and cannot be separated from it. The Rwandan army is thus a “political army” and is part and parcel of the political structures that oversee and govern the Rwandan state.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-259
Author(s):  
Katharine M. Millar

AbstractIn contemporary Western, liberal democratic societies, the soldier is frequently regarded as ‘the best of us’, taking on the unlimited liability for the protection and betterment of the whole. In the context of volunteer militaries and distant conflicts, the construction of men (and the universalised masculine citizen) as ‘always-already’ soldiers (or potential soldiers) poses a substantial obstacle to the identification or performance of ‘good’ civilian masculinity – particularly during wartime. The theorisation and articulation of a positive, substantive civilian masculinity, or masculinities, rather than one defined simply by an absence of military service and implication in the collective use of violence, is a central challenge of contemporary politics. As a means of illuminating the complex dynamics of this challenge, this article examines charitable practices of civilian support for the military, and corresponding constructions of masculinity, in the UK during the ‘war on terror’. In doing so, the article demonstrates the ways in which gendered ‘civilian anxiety’, through its connection to citizenship, comes to condition the political possibilities and subjectivities of all those who seek belonging in the liberal political community. The article concludes by arguing for the essentiality of a research programme oriented around ‘civilianness’, and civilian masculinity/ies.


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