The Past and Present of Civil-Military Relations

I started teaching a course on Civil-Military Relations a couple of years ago, mostly so that I could master the literature for my current project with David Auerswald on how countries control their militaries when engaged in multilateral operations. The old literature focused almost entirely on coups--causes, conduct, prevention and the behavior of military regimes. I was more focused on the newer parts that focused more on how advanced, stable democracies try to control their militaries not to avoid coups but to maximize effectiveness.

As it turns out, that old coup stuff is still relevant as events in Honduras this weekend suggest. Indeed, coups have not quite gotten as out of style as we hoped. Even in the absence of a military take-over, the issues and dynamics are still quite relevant, as we have watched in Iran where coup-proofing is the story of the day.

So, it looks like I didn't waste that much of my students' time the past couple of years.