James Burk

Theories of Democratic Civil-Military Relations:

This article reviews civil-military relations theory applied to mature democratic states. It assumes that the important theoretical problem is how to maintain a military that sustains and protects democratic values, showing how the classic and still influential theories of Huntington and Janowitz were rooted, respectively, in liberal and civic republican theories of democracy and, as a result, neither adequately solved this problem. The article then uses current research to pose new questions about the relations between military and political elites, the relations of civilians to the military and the state, and the multinational use of force. Based on the review, it concludes that a new theory of civil-military relations-one that accounts for the circumstances mature democracies presently face and tells how militaries can sustain as they protect democratic values cannot be derived from either liberal or civic republican models of democracy, as Huntington and Janowitz tried to do, but might be derived from federalist models.

Citizenship Status and Military Service: The Quest For Inclusion by Minorities and Conscientious Objectors

This article examines the relations between citizenship status and military service asthey have affected the social standing of African Americans, women, and conscientiousobjectors in the United States. One purpose is to review evidence for the claim that there isa close connection between ones willingness to perform military service and ones accep-tance as a citizen. Ironically, while the military has become a more inclusive institution forminorities since the end of World War II, the political community has become less insistentin its demand that citizens ought to perform military service. A second purpose is to correct(somewhat) the frequent preoccupation with economic and political inequality in the studyof citizenship. I show that apart from and before the question of ones place in a hierarchyof possession, there is the question of whether one is recognized and respected as a memberin good standing of the political community. Despite obvious differences, minority groupsand conscientious objectors are alike in their desire to protect their social standing ascitizens. In their different responses to military service, both seek to avoid becoming exilesin their own land. Studying this matter historically allows us to see why the relationshipbetween citizenship status and military service has relaxed since the end of World War 11.Unexpectedly perhaps, with an all-volunteer force, this relaxation enhances the prospectsfor the political and social inclusion of minorities more than it does for conscientious objectors.

Morris Janowitz and the Origins of Sociological Research on Armed Forces and Society

Despite early recognition of the importance of military institutions for understanding social organization and social change, sociology established no strong research tradition to study the military until after World War II. This paper explores the origins of this subfield by focusing on the pioneering contributions of Morris Janowitz. Relying on a comprehensive review of primary source documents, it provides a history of the first twenty years of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (IUS), an organization Janowitz founded in 1961 to support, extend, and routinize sociological study of the military as a social institution. Special attention is paid to the relation between the development of this institution and Janowitzs intellectual biography and to the strains resulting from the IUSs attempts to pursue multiple and sometimes conflicting goals.

The Citizen Soldier and Democratic Societies: A Comparative Analysis of America's Revolutionary and Civil Wars

This paper reviews and criticizes the argument that citizens should take active responsibility for and be willing to sacrifice their life to establish and protect a liberal democratic social order. The argument is faulted for assuming that the key for good democracy is to get people to accept their responsibilities, in particular, their responsibility to be citizen soldiers. It is at least as important to ask how the service of citizen soldiers is connected with the constitution of democratic society. The argument is also faulted for ignoring that democratic societies vary in form and virtue and that it is necessary to explain when citizen soldiers will promote the establishment of one kind of democracy or another. To correct these deficiencies, a theory is offered that ties the service of citizen soldiers during war to the quality of democratic society through the allocation and routinization of charisma. The theory is illustrated by a comparative historical analysis of American experience during its Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

The Public and The Military

PovzetekVrsta raziskovalcev v sodobnosti ugotavlja spremembe v civilno-vojaskih odnosih, zlasti povecevanje “socialne distance”, ki locuje javnost in vojsko oz. med njima ustvarja napetost. Ta argumentacija, ki predpostavlja indiferentnost javnosti do vojske in izolacijo vojske od ameriske družbe in civilnih voditeljev, je mocno problematicna. Empiricne raziskave v ZDA kažejo, da je javno mnenje kljub zmotljivosti posameznikov mocno organizirano, da racionalno reagira na razpoložljive informacije in da je dokaj stabilno v daljsem casovnem obdobju. Tudi v odnosu do vojske ni indiferentno in apaticno; nasprotno, raziskave po letu 1986 kažejo izrazito zaupanje v vojsko, ki je celo mnogo vecje od zaupanja v katerokoli drugo drusbeno institucijo. Zaupanje v vojsko je tesno povezano s podporo ameriski zunanji politiki. Toda po drugi strani ima Ie zelo malo ljudi neposredne izkusnje z vojsko. Manj kot pet odstotkov mladih v starosti med 18. in 23. letom je po podatkih iz General Social Survey (1990) služilo vojs...

Strategic Assumptions and Moral Implications of the Constabulary Force

Abstract Noting that the use of modern instruments of war had unpredictable and revolutionary consequences, Morris Janowitz introduced the concept of a ‘constabulary force’ to show how a professional military in a liberal democratic state might use modern weapons and yet conserve the existing political order. This article explores the meaning of this concept in three ways. First, it examines the strategic assumptions underlying the concept to explain why Janowitz thought it offered an approach to containing the revolutionary consequences of the use of force that was more promising than alternative concepts of military force. Second, it explores the moral implications of the concept (which Janowitz did not do), identifying key moral commitments a constabulary force must meet to sustain a liberal democratic order as it attempts to resolve dilemmas posed by the use of force. Third, it considers in what way these moral commitments are particular to a constabulary force, while yet preserving an approach to the use of force that could be applied across the spectrum of force by military structures of various kinds.

Debating the Draft In America

Military conscription has always been a hot issue in American politics. Debates about conscription, however, do not always revolve around the same issues. In this paper, arguments for and against the draft offered in World War II are compared with arguments offered during the Vietnam War. An important difference between these arguments is documented: while argument pro and con during the Second World War was based on assessments of the drafts impact on society, it was based during the Vietnam War on assessments of the drafts impact on individual citizens. This shift in focus is explained as the response of broad sectors of public opinion to long-term trends in patterns of social integration that are not directly related to the immediate problems (or requirements) of raising an army for war.

Military Mobilization in Modern Western Societies

All modern societies mobilize people to serve in the military. The question is how to do so. There are many possible institutional arrangements from which to choose, ranging from voluntary, local militia service to universal compulsory national service. Once made, the choice is consequential along at least three dimensions. It affects the prospects for winning war because the mobilization plan determines the size and affects the quality of the military force. It also affects formation of foreign policy because the mobilization plan presupposes a force structure and force structure determines the viability and variety of military options available for use in the conduct of foreign affairs. And it affects the way the military is integrated with-to influence and be influenced by-the society it is formed to protect, depending on who is drawn into military service and who is left behind. In this brief survey of military mobilization, it is shown that modern societies consider all three of these dimensions, war, geopolitics, and domestic political culture, when establishing institutional arrangements to raise a military for war. But they give these dimensions different weight at different times for reasons we have to explore.

The Liberal future in America : essays in renewal

The contributors to this collection approach the confused and paradoxical state of modern liberalism intending to clarify some new tendencies in liberal policy and philosophy. Prominent political scientists and political philosophers reflect on the difficulty of defining liberalism in a complex world for which it has neither lost its relevance nor proven its adequacy. They speculate on religion, family, economics, foreign policy, and other issues in relationship to recent changes in the liberal idea. The contributors do criticze some liberal practices and tendencies, but their basic purpose is to define the new directions in American liberalism, assess liberal programs, and examine the changing bases of the liberal constituency. Each seeks to define the foundations for a renewal of liberalism in America.

American Soldiers in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals?

Anarchy as Order is the third in a series of related books by Mohammed Bamyeh. Framed most broadly, Anarchy as Order explores that myriad of issues and contestations associated with moving from a society based on ‘‘an imposed order’’ to a society premised on ‘‘an unimposed order.’’ Substantively, this is an elaboration of the theoretical scaffolding Bamyeh began building in these earlier works. This is an essential consideration for the reader at times, because rather than a sustained, conventional engagement with the contemporary anarchist literature, Bamyeh elects in this book to expand further upon notions that were either introduced or at least hinted at in his previous works. (For instance, there are only three or four references to anarchist works published since 1993, while eight of the author’s works are cited.) This can be a fruitful approach that deepens one’s analysis and understanding of the author’s interpretation of anarchy as an unimposed order, but it also places certain obligations on the reader to consider a range of concepts in the broader context of debates that Bamyeh has explored more fully elsewhere. The principle merits of this work concern the author’s serious and considered effort to engage the profoundly difficult task of imagining a society based on unimposed order, while we remain necessarily locked within the analytical and conceptual limitations that reflect our everyday experiences with a society based on imposed order. In this regard, Bamyeh’s challenge is two-fold. First he must develop a language to describe such a society and second he must provide a plausible explanation of possible transitions to such a society. He takes on both of these to varying degrees of success. Where he falters, however, this is primarily a consequence of the inherent conceptual difficulty of presenting and analyzing any vision of a society that remains yet-in-formation. To describe a society based on unimposed order, Bamyeh deploys two basic strategies. First, by way of illustration, he cites cases of anarchy that arise historically (and spontaneously) within the fabric of a society based on imposed order. In the selection and description of cases there is a strong existentialist influence that shapes Bamyeh’s account. Somewhat problematically, however, this existentialist framework is never explicitly detailed and, thus, must be understood as having been earlier introduced in Of Death and Dominion. In fact, the existentialist premises of Bamyeh’s work are essential to understanding his notion of self-development that drives an individual’s pursuit and realization of freedom through the occasional and ongoing creation of anarchist spaces and the continual reorganization of social institutions that follows from this. For Bamyeh, this notion of self-development appears to be an almost exclusively organic process that follows from what it means to be an individual in mass society—regardless of the specific details of that mass society. The second strategy of Bamyeh is to describe a society based on unimposed order by providing a type of counter description of such a society via a series of contrasts with societies based on imposed order. Recognizing the inherent difficulties of presenting a transparent vision of a society whose premises for being remain in a yet-to-be realized set of social conditions and conceptual categories, Bamyeh leads the reader through a detailed account of various conceptual categories of social organization derived from a society based on imposed order and provides an alternative understanding of these same categories as they might be experienced in a society based on unimposed order. These conceptual categories include civil society, the common good, self-will, commitment, and freedom. As a general strategy this strikes me as a plausible and