Are all soldiers created equal to deal with the multiple relationships found in contemporary military operations? Principal-agent theory has long been used in understanding relationships within political environments, and was recently applied by Feaver to understand civil-military relations. While Feaver’s institutional application focuses on two actors, the soldier and the state, recent criticism of this two-actor approach requires an expansion to include the actors beyond the state (e.g., United Nations, coalitions) that influence contemporary military operations. This article adopts the principal-agent framework to examine the case of Kosovo, with quantitative and qualitative data collected from key military commanders from the United States and United Kingdom. Using their experience, this article explores the relationships found outside the two-actor model: between soldiers and actors beyond the state. We argue that variation exists in the relationships and that nationality provides some clues why this variation is observed. Furthermore, terms are introduced (specified, implied, defied, and denied relationships) to more accurately describe these principal-agent relationships.
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References
1.
In the sense of identification of the major actors and how they interact, Huntington pioneered the institutional approach to civil-military relations. For more on Huntington’s contribution see Peter Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Peter Feaver, “Civil-Military Relations,” Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1999): 211–241.
2.
See Peter Feaver, “Crisis as Shirking: An Agency Theory Explanation of the Souring of American Civil-Military Relations,”Armed Forces & Society24, 3 (1998): 407–434.
3.
See Andrew J. Bacevich, “Absent History: A Comment on Dauber, Desch and Feaver,”Armed Forces & Society24, 3 (1998): 447–454; James Burk, “The Logic of Crisis and Civil-Military Relations Theory: A Comment on Desch, Feaver, and Dauber,” Armed Forces &Society 24, 3 (1998): 455–462.
4.
See James Burk, “Theories of Democratic Civil-Military Relations,”Armed Forces & Society29, 1 (2002): 7–29.
5.
Feaver, Armed Servants, 294–294.
6.
Such situations represent a multiple-principal environment, defined as an environment of common agency where multiple principals possessing divergent preferences try to influence the actions of a single agent. See D. Berhnhem and M. Whinston, “Common Agency,”Econometrica54, 4 (1987): 923–942; Mona Lyne and Michael Tierney, “Variation in the Structure of Principals: Conceptual Clarification for Research on Delegation and Agency Control.” Paper presented at the Conference on Delegation and International Organizations, Park City,UT, 2002.
7.
The terms diversified and unified are used to distinguish between the US and the UK. In diver-sified institutional (multiple-principal) settings such as the United States, military agents have the opportunity to play multiple civilian principals off of each other. In unified (single-principal) domestic settings such as the United Kingdom, such opportunities are more limited. Avant concludes that in a diversified setting, the military is less likely to embrace civilian-led doctrinal innovations than in a unified setting. See Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars. Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
8.
While the variety of command relationships hierarchically beneath the MNB commanders could be explored in the future, this research on the various principals’ influence on a single actor: the MNB commanders.
9.
Focusing on the United States and the United Kingdom, due to their long history and current participation in military operations, sets the framework for application of this study to their contemporary and future operations.
10.
D. Roderick Kiewet and Mathew D. McCubbins, The Logic of Delegation: Congressional Parties and the Appropriations Process (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991).
11.
Feaver, Armed Servants, 54–54.
12.
As Moe explains, “The logic of the principal-agent model, therefore, immediately leads us to the theoretical issues at the heart of the contractual paradigm: issues of hierarchical control in the context of information asymmetry and conflict of interest.” Terry Moe, “The New Economics of Organization,”American Journal of Political Science28 (1984): 739–777. See also Kenneth J. Arrow, “The Economics of Agency,” in John W. Pratt and Richard J. Zeck-hauser (eds.), Principals and Agents: The Structure of Business (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1985); J.S. Banks and B.R. Weingast, “The Political Control of Bureaucracies under Asymmetric Information,” American Journal of Political Science 36 (1992): 509–524.
13.
Randall L. Clavert, Mathew D. McCubbins, and B.R. Weingast, “A Theory of Political Control and Agency Discretion,”American Journal of Political Science33, 3 (1989): 589–590.
14.
First, due to the military being professionals, civilian principals may be unable or professionally incapable to closely monitor military actions. Second, the military information may be classified, restricting what information is available to the principals. Third, information asymmetry may be exacerbated due to the expeditionary nature of military operations. See Feaver, Armed Servants.
15.
Banks and Weingast, “Political Control”; A Lupia and M.D. McCubbins, “Learning from Oversight: Fire Alarms and Police Patrols Reconstructed,”Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization10 (1994): 96–125; John W. Pratt and Richard J. Zeckhauser, “Principals and Agents: An Overview,” in Principals and Agents (see note 12).
16.
Examples of monitoring include the use of third parties (“fire alarms”), investigations (“police patrols”), required reports, and contractual design. See Mathew D. McCubbins and Thomas Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols Versus Fire Alarms,”American Journal of Political Science2 (1984): 165–179.
17.
Feaver, Armed Servants; McCubbins and Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked.”
18.
In contrast to costly and unwanted monitoring, some have argued that the ideal institutional design works toward synchronizing the agent’s preferences with the principals, thus eliminating the need for monitoring and their subsequent costs. See John Brehm and Scott Gates,Working, Shirking, and Sabotage: Bureaucratic Response to a Democratic Public (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1997). The present article assumes a perfect overlap of preferences between principals and agents, especially in the civil-military relationship, as highly unlikely. See Feaver, Armed Servants.
19.
Ibid., 64. As opposed to traditional principal-agent relationships where the two actors want different things (the principal wants work, the agent wants to loaf), Feaver assumes that the principals and agents in civil-military relations want the same thing: the security of the state. See also Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, rev. ed. (New York:Columbia University Press, 1991).
20.
Kiewet and McCubbins, The Logic of Delegation; McCubbins and Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked”; McNollgast, “Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control of Agencies,”Virginia Law Review75 (1987): 431–482.
21.
Feaver, Armed Servants.
22.
For example, are the probabilities of being caught and punished known by all actors? Does the model possess a true predictive function, determining the situations when the military chooses to work or shirk?
23.
Feaver, Armed Servants, 102–102.
24.
The best-known example of multiple principals attempting to influence the action taken by a single agent is the common agency model of Berhnhem and Whinston, “Common Agency.”
25.
Moe, “The New Economics of Organization,”768–769.
26.
Moser argues that agent independence can be explained as a function of how many principals exist, and their ability to check each other. The more principals with checks, the greater the incentive to grant independence. Peter Moser, “Checks and Balances, and the Supply of Central Bank Independence,”European Economic Review43 (1999): 1569–1593. See also Kiewet and McCubbins, The Logic of Delegation; Suzanne Lohmann, “Federalism and Central Bank Independence: The Politics of German Monetary Policy, 1957–92,” World Politics 50, 3(1998): 401–406.
27.
Avant, Peripheral Wars, 99–99.
28.
Feaver, Armed Servants, 99–99.
29.
Focusing on only the elected civilian leaders (e.g., congress, parliament, or the president), would also ignore a higher ranking, where the ultimate authority lies in a democracy: the voter. Through elections, the voter delegates authority to elected officials.
30.
In many civil-military relationships, the civilian principal does not have the professional expertise of the military agent. Therefore, a greater degree of delegation can be anticipated than when the principal is a military officer. Because of the strict hierarchical nature of the military, a high-ranking officer has likely served in the agent position. Such a high-ranking member of the military, as a principal, would have a clear understanding of the agent’s job. Therefore, a higher degree of monitoring is assumed.
31.
Lyne and Tierney, “Variation in the Structure of Principals,”2–2.
32.
These frameworks are employed following Yin’s concept of analytic generalization, where “a previously developed theory is used as a template with which to compare the empirical results of the case study.” Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 2nd ed.Applied Social Research Methods Series 5. (London: Sage Publications, 1994), 31–31.
33.
Due to the low N (19) of the population of US and UK officers, the author sought interviews with each member of the population. Short of this, a balance between US and UK officers was sought. Of the nine UK MNB-Centre officers, eight were interviewed and completed the survey (89 percent). Of the ten US MNB-East Commanders, nine were interviewed and completed the survey (90 percent). One of the US MNB-East Commanders was commanding coalition ground forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom and thus unavailable; the assistant MNB-East Commander was interviewed and completed the survey.
34.
This NATO definition of OPCON is more limited than the US doctrinal definition in that it includes only the authority to control the unit in the exact specified task for the limited time,function, and location. The US military explains OPCON as “Operational control normally provides full authority to organize commands and forces and to employ those forces as the commander in operational control considers necessary to accomplish assigned missions” (emphasis added). Department of the Army, Field Manual (Fm) 101-5-1: Operational Terms and Graphics (Washington, DC: Field Manual Headquarters, 1997), 1-114. This difference in OPCON definitions is embodied in Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD-25), which grants that the US President will “on a case by case basis, consider placing appropriate US forces under the operational control of a component UN commander to achieve specific military objectives.” However, PDD-25 notes that “Within the limits of operational control, a foreign UN commander cannot: change the mission or deploy US forces outside the area of responsibility agreed to by the President, separate units, divide their supplies, administer discipline, promote anyone, or change the internal organization.” For the full text of PDD-25, see the Federation of American Scientists Web site at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd25.htm
35.
For the US military, the Kosovo mission was assigned to European Command (EUCOM). The EUCOM commander served in the US position as well in the position of Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), a NATO position. EUCOM directed the United States Army, Europe (USAREUR) to deploy a brigade task force to support KFOR. USAREUR, in turn, directed V Corps, who in turn directed a division. As the mission rotated between divisions, each in turn placed a brigade OPCON to KFOR, and the division commander appointed one of his deputy commanders to become the MNB-East commander.
36.
Like the US, the UK placed their forces under OPCON to KFOR. See Secretary of State for Defence, Kosovo: Lessons from the Crisis; Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Defence by Command of Her Majesty (London: The Stationery Office, 2000). The Kosovo mission was assigned by the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) to the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ); PJHQ, in turn, assigned the Kosovo mission to a brigade. The brigade commander, a UK brigadier, became the MNB-Centre commander.
37.
Title X refers to a section of the United States Code, which is the consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States that provides the legal foundation for US national military involvement in coalition missions. See http://uscode.house.gov
38.
See “Combatant Commands,” subtitle A, part I, chapter 6 of Title X. Section 164, “Commanders of combatant commands; assignment; powers and duties,” paragraph (c), “Command Authority of Combatant Commanders,” sub-paragraph (A) of Title X, United States Code. See http://uscode.house.gov
39.
Emphasis added. See Ministry of Defence, British Defence Doctrine (London: Ministry of Defence, 2002).
40.
See Michael C. Williams, “Civil-Military Relations and Peacekeeping,” in Adelphi Paper 321 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998).
41.
For the full text of UNSCR 1244, the MTA, or other documents pertinent to KFOR, see http://www.nato.int/kfor
42.
See Matthew B. Miles and A. Michael Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis, 2nd ed. (London:Sage Publications, 1994).
43.
JWP-0-01.1, Universal Joint Task List, A-6–A-6.
44.
Ibid., A-5.
45.
See Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957).
46.
See Feaver, Armed Servants.
47.
Huntington, The Soldier and the State.
48.
Attributed to French Premier Georges Clemenceau during World War I.
49.
The complex situation is exacerbated by a phenomenon that became evident over the course of the 1990s. The emergence of the “strategic corporal” has drastically altered the shape of the military’s role in postconflict outcomes. Consider that a junior soldier, tasked with controlling a vehicle checkpoint, has the power to significantly alter the course of events if he/she stops a war criminal, delays an important civilian official, or opens fire prematurely on a truck-load of refugees. A tactical decision made by this corporal can well have strategic effects. This has the implication that no amount of civilian monitoring can adequately oversee this level of military activity.
