Abstract
What is the relationship between civilians (“people without arms”), the society at large, and the military (“people with arms”) established as a separate armed body in order to protect a society? This question has a long history that goes back to antiquity, to the very beginnings of military organization in civilian societies.1 In each country the answer to this question is deeply influenced by national history, sentiments, and traditions. It depends on the role of the army as a state institution in the given country, subordination of the military to political authorities as defined in laws and constitutional arrangements, and so on. Public perceptions of military personnel, the prestige of the military officer’s profession, public opinion toward defense and foreign policy of the regime and certain actions of the army, and so on, determine it. The very nature of the problem is permanently changing because both society and the military are constantly changing as well.
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By “arms” or “weapons,” we understand those instruments of offence generally made use of in war, such as firearms and swords. The term “military,” as a sociological category, is interpreted as “an acceptance of organized violence as a legitimate means for realizing social activities. Military organization it follows, are structures for the co-ordination of activities meant to ensure victory on the battlefield. In modern times these structures have increasingly taken the form of permanent establishment maintained in peace time for the eventuality of armed conflict and managed by a professional military” (Sills, 1972).
According to well-established theories of civil-military relations, “the concept of the military as a permanent establishment maintained solely in support of foreign policy objectives presupposes the development of a civil society based on consensus. In such a society, the armed forces are called upon to cope with domestic disorder only in extraordinary circumstances, this task being relegated largely to civilian police forces. However, the incapacity of party governments to resolve vexing internal problems, including an inability to mobilize the ‘home front’ in support of national goals, has on many occasions led the military to do more than provide coercive power for use against external enemies. Their role in this regard has been especially important in those newly emerging nations whose civil institutions and sense of national identity have not yet had sufficient time to develop” (Sills, 1972, p. 305).
Before proceeding further the meaning of the term “professional military” should be made very clear. It means those “who pursues a lifetime occupational career of service in the armed forces, where to qualify as a professional, he must acquire the expertise necessary to help manage the permanent military establishment during period of peace and to take part in the direction of military occupation if war should break out. Career commitment and expertise, the hall mark of any professional set the professional military personnel apart from those other personnel in the armed services who are merely carrying out a contractual or obligatory tour of duty or for whom officer status primarily represents, as it often did in former times an honorific part-time into which military skill enters only as a secondary consideration” (Sills, 1972, p. 305).
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© 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Rukavishnikov, V.O., Pugh, M. (2006). Civil-Military Relations. In: Caforio, G. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of the Military. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-34576-0_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-34576-0_8
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