Keywords: civil-military relations, democratic control of the armed forces, enlargement of NATO
Civil-military relations, along with civilian and democratic control of armed forces is a traditional topic of theoretical and empirical literature of political sciences which experienced a „renaissance” with the post-Communist transition in Central and Eastern Europe, the emergence of new states as well as the post conflict peace and institution-building efforts around the world.
In civilian-dominated political systems, both democratic and authoritarian, the concept of civil-military relations and civilian control over the armed forces are closely intertwined. In democratic systems, the central issue of civil-military relations is democratic control of the military.
In my paper I attempt to evaluate two determining factors – security threat environment and political conditionality of international organizations - on civil-military relations using Slovenia and Croatia as a case study.
The relationship between external threats and civil-military relations has already been explored by Laswell (1941) and Andreski (1968). In my study I will use the structural realist framework developed by Michael C. Desch (2001) which integrates external and internal security threats in a single model.
Both countries concerned experienced an armed conflict in the early 1990s, although different in duration and intensity. In addition, Croatia also experienced substantial internal threats (Croatian Serb insurgency from 1991 to 1995)
Apart from threat environment I will evaluate the influence of external actors (particularly international organizations) on nation-state policies in form of political conditionality.
Both Slovenia and Croatia aspired to join the NATO and European Union from the early 1990s, which required them to align their legislation and institutional framework with NATO and EU requirements in the area of democratic control over the armed forces.
In this case I will argue that NATO and EU conditionality had a substantial policy influence in these areas only from the point these organizations offered a credible membership perspective for the countries concerned.
As regards to methodology the proposed paper will apply elements of comparative case study analysis and process tracing.
My analytical framework was developed for the post-Yugoslav region but may have explanatory power for other post-Communist new states as well, such as the Baltic republics.
References
ANDRESKI S. [1968]: Military Organization and Society. University of California Press, Berkeley.
DESCH M.C. [2001]: Civilian Control of the Military, the changing security environment. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
LASSWELL H.D. [1941]: "The Garrison State". In: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 46. No. 4, pp. 455-468
