Civilian control of the military is central to the making of security policy, ensuring that civilian officials and the elected leaders that appoint them oversee and decide military affairs. This paper exposes a challenge to civilian control in the United States that originates in the disparaging attitudes military personnel hold toward civilian society. We argue that when military personnel view military culture as superior, they are more likely to view civilian political leaders as illegitimate and in turn to favor actions that undermine civilian control. We develop a typology of civilian control in which military officers can constrain, contest and limit civilian authority. Our empirical analysis provides strong and consistent evidence of the corrosive effects of military superiority on civilian control across three surveys of U.S. military personnel: the 1998-99 TISS survey of 2901 military officers, a 2014 YouGov of 275 veterans, and an original 2020 survey of 770 West Point cadets.
AvantDeborah. 1994. Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
2.
AvantD. D.1996. “Are the reluctant warriors out of control? Why the U.S. military is averse to responding to post‐cold war low‐level threats.” Security Studies6, 2: 51‐90.
3.
BaronR. M.KennyD. A.. 1986. “The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology51, 6: 1173‐1182.
BeliakovaP.2021. “Erosion of Civilian Control in Democracies: A Comprehensive Framework for Comparative Analysis.” Comparative Political Studies54, 8: 1393‐1423.
6.
BrooksRisa A. 2009. “Militaries and Political Activity in Democracies.” In American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era, edited by NielsenSuzanne C.SniderDon M., Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
7.
BrooksRisa A. 2019. “Integrating the Civil-Military Relations Sub-field.” Annual Review of Political Science22, 20: 1‐20.
8.
BrooksRisa A. 2020a. “Paradoxes of Professionalism: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment.” International Security44, 4: 7‐44.
9.
BrooksRisa A. 2020b. “The Paradoxes of Huntingtonian Professionalism.” In Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations, edited by BeehnerLionelBrooksRisaMaurerDaniel, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Chapter 1.
10.
BrooksRisa. 2021. “Beyond Huntington: Military Professionalism Today.” Parameters51, 1: 65‐77.
11.
BrooksRisaRobinsonMichaelUrbenHeidi. 2021a. “What Makes a Military Professional? Evaluating Norm Socialization in West Point Cadets” Armed Forces & Society. (published; online first 20 June).
12.
BrooksRisaGolbyJimUrbenHeidi. 2021b. “Crisis of Command: America’s Broken Civil- Military Relations Imperils National Security,” Foreign Affairs. print edition, 64‐75.
13.
BryantSusanSwaneyBrettUrbenHeidi. 2021. “From Citizen Soldier to Secular Saint: The Societal Implications of Military Exceptionalism.” Texas National Security Review4:2(Spring), 10‐24.
CebulMatthewSharanGrewal. 2022. “Military Conscription and Nonviolent Resistance.” Comparative Political Studies. Forthcoming
16.
CroissantA.KuehnD.ChambersP.WolfS. O.. 2010. “Beyond the fallacy of coup-ism: conceptualizing civilian control of the military in emerging democracies.” Democratization17, 5: 950‐975.
17.
DempseyJason K. 2010. Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
GolbyJ.FeaverP.DroppK.. 2018. “Elite Military Cues and Public Opinion About the Use of Military Force.” Armed Forces & Society44, 1: 44‐71.
28.
GolbyJimFeaverPeter. 2019. “Thank you for your Lip Service? Social Pressure to Support the Troops.” War on the RocksAugust 14.
29.
HookerJr.RichardD.. 2003. “Soldiers of the State: Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations.” Parameters33, 4: 4‐18.
30.
HolstiOle R.2004. “Identity of the U.S. Military: Comments on “An N of 1.” Perspectives on Politics2, 3: 557‐560.
31.
HuntingtonSamuel1957. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
32.
ImaiK.KeeleL.TingleyD.YamamotoT.. 2011. “Unpacking the Black Box of Causality: Learning about Causal Mechanisms from Experimental and Observational Studies.” American Political Science Review105, 4: 765‐789.
33.
JanowitzMorris. 1960. The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait Glencoe. IL: The Free Press.
34.
JostTylerKertzerJoshua D.. 2020. Armies and Influence: Public Deference to Foreign Policy Elites, 1‐65. Working Paper.
35.
KarlinMara. 2020. “Civilian Oversight inside the Pentagon: Who does it and how?” In Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations, edited by BeehnerLionelBrooksRisaMaurerDaniel, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Chapter 4.
36.
KlayPhil. 2018. Warrior at the Mall. New York, NY: New York Times. April 14.
37.
KleykampM.HipesC.MacLeanA.. 2017. “Who Supports U.S. Veterans and Who Exaggerates Their Support?” Armed Forces & Society44, 1: 92‐115.
38.
KingDavid C.KarabellZachary. 2002. The Generation of Trust: Public Confidence in the U.S. Military Since Vietnam. Washington, DC: The AEI Press.
39.
KoehlerKevinGrewalSharanAlbrechtHolger. 2022. Who Fakes Support for the Military? Experimental Evidence from Tunisia. forthcoming: ” Democratization.
40.
KohnRichard.1970. The Inside History of the Newburgh Conspiracy: America and the Coup d'Etat, Vol. XXVII, I87‐220. William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser.
41.
KohnRichard.1975. Eagle and the Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783-1802. Free Press.
42.
KohnRichard.1994. Out of Control: The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations. Washington, DC: The National Interest.
43.
KohnRichard.2002. “The Erosion of Civilian Control of the Military in the United States Today.” Naval War College Review55, 3: 2‐52.
KuehnDavid. 2018. “Democratic Control of the Military.”In Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, edited by CaforioG.NuciariM., Cham, Vietnam: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer.
46.
LovemanBrian. 1994. Constitutions of Tyranny: Regimes of Exception Across Spanish America. Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press.
47.
LuptonDanielle. 2017. “Out of the Service, Into the House: Military Service and Congressional War Oversight.” Political Research Quarterly70: 2.
48.
MehtaAaron. 2020. “Esper Announces Leak Investigation at Pentagon.” Defense News. July 9.
49.
Neto, Octavio Amorim and Pedro Accorsi. 2022. “Presidents and Generals: Systems of Government and the Selection of Defense Ministers. ” Armed Forces & Society 48, 1: 136-163.
50.
NordlingerEric. 1977. Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
51.
Pion-BerlinDavid. 1997. Through Corridors of Power: Institutions and Civil-Military Relations in Argentina. University Park, PA: Penn State U. Press.
52.
PhillipsDaveSchmidtEric. 2021. How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike that Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria. New York, NY: New York Times. Nov. 13.
53.
RaysideDavid M.1996. “The Perils of Congressional Politics.” In Gay Rights, Military Wrongs: Political Perspectives of Lesbians and Gays in the Military, edited by RimmermanCraig A., New York, NY: Garland.
54.
RecchiaStefano. 2015. Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors: U.S. Civil-Military Relations and Multilateral Intervention. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
55.
Ricks ThomasE. 1997. “The Widening Gap Between the Military and Society. New York, NY: The Atlantic Monthly. July.
56.
RobinsonMichael. 2018. Danger Close: Military Politicization and Elite Credibility.PhD dissertation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.
UrbenHeidiGolbyJim. 2020 “A Matter of Trust: Five Pitfalls that could Squander the American Public's Confidence in the Military,” In Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations, edited by BeehnerBrooksMaurer, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, Chapter 7.
65.
WeigleyRussell F.1993. “The American Military and the Principle of Civilian Control from McClennan to Powell.” The Journal of Military History57, October: 5.
66.
WingateChristopher W.2009. “Military Professionalism and the Early American Officer Corps, 1789–1796,” master’s thesis. Leavenworth, WA: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
