Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Feaver, Peter D., 1961-

Title Armed servants : agency, oversight, and civil-military relations / Peter D. Feaver
Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2003

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xi, 381 pages) : illustrations
Contents 1. Introduction -- 2. Huntington's Cold War Puzzle -- 3. The Informal Agency Theory -- 4. A Formal Agency Model of Civil-Military Relations -- 5. An Agency Theory Solution to the Cold War Puzzle -- 6. Explaining the Post-Cold War "Crisis," 1990-2000 -- 7. Using Agency Theory to Explore the Use of Force in the Post-Cold War Era -- 8. Conclusion
Summary How do civilians control the military? In the wake of September 11, the renewed presence of national security in everyday life has made this question all the more pressing. In this book, Peter Feaver proposes an ambitious new theory that treats civil-military relations as a principal-agent relationship, with the civilian executive monitoring the actions of military agents, the "armed servants" of the nation-state. Military obedience is not automatic but depends on strategic calculations of whether civilians will catch and punish misbehavior. This model challenges Samuel Huntington's professionalism-based model of civil-military relations, and provides an innovative way of making sense of the U.S. Cold War and post-Cold War experience--especially the distinctively stormy civil-military relations of the Clinton era. In the decade after the Cold War ended, civilians and the military had a variety of run-ins over whether and how to use military force. These episodes, as interpreted by agency theory, contradict the conventional wisdom that civil-military relations matter only if there is risk of a coup. On the contrary, military professionalism does not by itself ensure unchallenged civilian authority. As Feaver argues, agency theory offers the best foundation for thinking about relations between military and civilian leaders, now and in the future
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 337-369) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
In English
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCOhost, viewed April 3, 2019)
SUBJECT USA Government gnd
Subject Civil-military relations -- United States
Civil supremacy over the military -- United States
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Process -- Political Advocacy.
Civil-military relations
Civil supremacy over the military
Militär
Staatsaufsicht
Agency-Theorie
Krijgsmacht.
Controle.
Nationale veiligheid.
United States
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780674036772
0674036778
0674010515
9780674010512
0674262875
9780674262874