Civil-Military Relations in Europe: Learning from Crisis and Institutional Change

Democracy is unlikely to develop or to endure unless military and other security forces are controlled by democratic institutions and necessary safeguards, checks and balances are in place. The result of a 2-year research project managed under the auspices of the European Group on Armed Forces and Society (ERGOMAS) and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), this comparative study examines how contemporary European states, both mature Western democracies and emerging democracies of post-communist Europe, manage the issue of how best to control the very institution that has been established for their protection and wields the monopoly of legitimate force. This volume contains 28 case studies from 14 countries: the Czech Republic, Germany, Georgia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro, Switzerland, and the Ukraine. The studies cover a variety of situation from corruption to military incompetence, disobediencetowards civilian superiors, lack of expertise among civilians, to unauthorized strikes and accidents. They focus on the relationship between political, civilian and military actors while identifying problems and dangers that can emerge in those relations to the detriment of effective and legitimate democratic control. This book will be of much interest to students of Civil-Military Relations, military sociology, IR and strategic studies.