Military Organizational Culture in Protest Response

When mass protests overwhelm the capacity of the police, civilian authorities often rely on soldiers to restore order. I argue that the military relies on historical precedents to guide its institutional response to protests. Soldiers rely on the military's organizational culture, a set of shared values, assumptions and beliefs, to guide their decision making. Military responses, from violent repression to complete disengagement, are driven by soldiers' shared understandings about their proper roles and missions, duties and responsibilities, and relationship to both ruler and ruled. Evidence from the Arab Spring protests of 2010-2011, and causal process tracing in the Tunisian case, provide support for the theory. The role of the military in producing Tunisia's largely nonviolent, prodemocratic regime transition has been widely lauded by scholars and policymakers alike. However, existing explanations for this outcome – namely, the lack of regime patronage toward military officers – do not fit the observed pattern of military response. Rather than move to oust Ben Ali, the military was generally loyal and never disobeyed his orders. Instead, the army's culture of restraint led soldiers to intervene to defend state institutions, but to avoid arbitrating or escalating the dispute.

Zivilmacht Bundesrepublik?

Employing perspectives from the fields of political science and history, this interdisciplinary volume examines the explanatory power of the concept of ‘civilian power’ for the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany. Based on European and global topics, the volume examines whether the foreign behaviour of the Federal Republic before and after 1989 can be understood through this concept. Moreover, it examines similar historical concepts like the ‘culture of restraint’, alternatives to civilian power or deviations from the respective concepts in the Federal Republic’s practice of foreign policy. The respective case studies it conducts not only employ relational perspectives through which the Federal Republic’s bilateral relations can be investigated through a theoretical lens, but also examine domestic processes of interpretation and contestation about Germany as a ‘civilian power’. With contributions by Klaus Brummer, Friedrich Kießling, Kristina Spohr, Hanns W. Maull, Gunther Hellmann, Andreas Plöger, Dominik Geppert, Sebastian Harnisch, Ulrich Lappenküper, Mladen Mladenov, Bernhard Stahl, Andreas N. Ludwig, Caroline Rothauge, Christian Rabini, Katharina Dimmroth, Mischa Hansel, Kai Oppermann, Patrick A. Mello.

Domestic Constraints, German Foreign Policy and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

Since the end of the Cold War, Germany has assumed a greater profile in addressing global security concerns. This article analyzes the evolution of Germany's approach to peacebuilding in the post Cold War era. It argues that while Germany could play a unique and important role in such missions, it has largely demurred. The muted quality of German leadership in international peacebuilding reveals a foreign policy role identity that remains circumscribed by a culture of restraint (Kultur der Zurückhaltung). From a constructivist perspective, this “culture of restraint” acts as a cognitive map for political leaders and policy makers, privileging a set of norms that guide policy-making. Peacebuilding missions present opportunities for Germany to operationalize the most fundamental tenets undergirding Germany's postwar foreign policy identity: the preference to cooperate with other states through multilateral institutions, the use of economic instruments to obtain foreign policy goals, and support for supranational institutions to address global problems. But such opportunities are not seized due to the absence of political elite consensus, inter-party, and inter-ministerial dissensus, institutional fragmentation and insufficient material support for international peacebuilding endeavors.