Agency, institutions, and the enduring pattern of American civil -military relations

Who prevails when American political leaders and military officers disagree? This study develops and tests two explanations drawn from prominent streams of civil-military relations thought. Revised Structural (RS) theory argues that changes in political, military, and societal actors' perceptions of external and internal threats explain variations in civilian control. Agency in Institutions (All) theory predicts that civilians' influence over military behavior depends on arrangements of policy preferences among political and military actors. It identifies four specific patterns in how these arrangements affect civilian leaders' ability to shape the incentives for military officers' behavior by threatening punishments, promising rewards, and monitoring military affairs.;The structured qualitative test examines the theories' predictions about civilians' ability to influence military behavior in six American civil-military disputes: military strategy in the War of 1812, military strategy in the Civil War, racial integration of the armed forces, military strategy in the Korean War, gays in the military, and military involvement in Bosnia. The historical cases provide far stronger support for All's predictions about both causal processes and outcomes than RS's.;The findings offer important implications for both research and policy. Contrary to prescriptions for objective control, civilian leaders should forge political unity and aggressively employ incentives to ensure military policy supports national policy. By sustaining this unity over time, civilians can influence the officer corps' policy preferences and not just their short-term behavior. Civilians can frequently improve control by fostering intra-military rivalries; however, these rivalries' may impair military effectiveness. The cases also suggest that civil-military relations are improved when civilians control an effective, independent means of gathering and assessing information about the military. All's logic suggests that the United States' history of freedom from direct military threats to democracy can largely be attributed to American civilians' enduring consensus on core democratic principles that reject extra-legal military intervention.