Cet article propose une réflexion sur les initiatives politiques déployées ces dernières années un peu partout en Occident afin de rendre les forces armées plus « représentatives ». S'il est difficile de contester la légitimité démocratique de ces initiatives, celles-ci risquent néanmoins de porter atteinte à l'autonomie professionnelle des officiers au sein des forces armées, conformément à ce que nous appelons le « compromis huntingtonien », soit le modèle de relations civilo-militaires qui domine encore aujourd'hui en Occident. En effet, en intervenant directement dans les « affaires internes » des forces armées, le pouvoir civil se trouve ainsi à empiéter sur les pouvoirs et le champ des responsabilités professionnelles exercées par les officiers sur les forces armées. Pour pallier ce risque, nous proposons un élargissement du « rôle politique » de l'officier, à l'intérieur même du cadre fixé par le compromis huntingonien. Cela devrait se traduire par deux axes complémentaires d'action pour l'officier aujourd'hui négligés : d'une part, défendre la place singulière des forces armées dans la société et, d'autre part, agir en tant qu'agent de changement culturel au sein des forces armées.

The study of coup-proofing holds significant importance in political science as it offers insights into critical topics such as military coups, authoritarian governance, and international conflicts. However, due to the multifaceted nature of coup-proofing and empirical inconsistencies with existing indicators, there is a need for a more profound understanding and a new measurement methodology. We propose a new measure of the extent of coup-proofing, utilizing a Bayesian item response theory. We estimate the extent of coup-proofing using a sample of 76 countries between 1965 and 2005 and theoretically relevant observed indicators. The findings from the estimation demonstrate that the extent of coup-proofing varies across regime type, country, and time. Furthermore, we verify the construct validity of our measurement.

Sudan has for decades been one of Africa's most fragmented polities. Yet arguably the single most consequential actor in its recent history is among the least well studied: the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). For most of post-independence statehood, Khartoum has been ruled by generals. This article places SAF in a longitudinal context of the expansion and contraction of state power and the functions of the coercive apparatus in these processes. It situates SAF in institutional logics, driven by historically contingent ideas about the nature of the polity, the role of the army within it and its likely partners and enemies. Doing so historicises the strategic calculus of SAF during the 2018–2019 December Revolution which mobilised millions but ended with a new coup in October 2021. I underscore how institutionalised rivalry between SAF and other security services has moulded patterns of regime change and consolidation: from Ja'afar Nimeiri and Omar Al-Bashir to Abdelfatah Al-Burhan today, anxieties over security competition and state fragility shape SAF's willingness to break with regimes it once dominated and its subsequent subversion of revolutionary change and democratisation.

Most countries deployed their military in some capacity to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. We present original data on early pandemic-related deployments, identifying seven types of deployment: logistic operations, enforcement, international involvement, border protection, information provision, intelligence operations, and domestic protection. We find that military deployments are shaped by capacity and electoral considerations, even after accounting for cross-country differences in perceptions of the military. Countries with elected leaders were significantly more likely to deploy the military for border protection. Incumbents facing reelection were especially sensitive to electoral concerns, becoming significantly less likely to deploy the military for domestic enforcement when facing an imminent election.

Sudan’s decision to normalize relations with Israel sparked controversy about its reasons for doing so and the potential impact on the country’s fragile political transition. The decision was mostly attributed to American pressures, new regional alliances, and Sudan’s economic crisis. Tawfik offers a different perspective by linking Sudan’s normalization with Israel to domestic power rivalries, suggesting that Sudanese political actors at critical historical moments have sought Israeli patronage to strengthen their power positions and exploring the potential implications of normalization on civil-military relations. In addition to relying on secondary sources, Tawfik draws conclusions based on official documents and interviews with Sudanese officials published by various news outlets.

This article examines the conditions under which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) gain access to defence administrations when campaigning for transparency around the use of military force. We theorise that gaining access in this traditionally secluded domain is a matter of supply and demand. NGOs can gain access through technical and political information, yet not without demand for these resources, dependent on the politicisation of concerns about the use of force. We focus on the activities of Airwars, an international NGO, and its campaign in the Netherlands (2015–20) to foster transparency about civilian casualties caused by Dutch airstrikes. Our analysis shows that their credible information about air strikes led to access to the defence administration and allowed them to effectively advocate for transparency, mediated by the politicisation of the issue through parliamentary and media attention. Our findings contribute both to the literature on NGO advocacy and to the field of civil-military relations.

Tensions between civil and military authorities over issues such as budgets and strategic posture are unavoidable in pluralistic societies. Scholars of Civil-Military Relations (CMR) have identified a range of practices through which civil-military contestation occurs, and examined their implications for issues such as military effectiveness. This literature, however, has yet to incorporate critical approaches to knowledge into its analysis. Seeking to fill this gap, this article explores how the British military's presentation of its professional knowledge has been increasingly shaped by the political context of British defence policy. More specifically, it argues that the British armed forces’ presentation of opaque imaginations of future war in military doctrine has sought to entrench the role of Defence in an environment of increasingly integrated governmental responses to security challenges. To do this, the article focuses specifically on two concepts that have become increasingly significant in the British defence establishment's articulation of its professional authority and strategic purpose – Multi-Domain Integration (MDI) and the Integrated Operating Concept (IOpC). The article therefore contributes to the literature a fresh perspective of the role of military doctrine and epistemic practices in civil-military contestation, as well as a critical account of the politics of knowledge in British defence.

What roles are military institutions expected to play in today's rapidly changing security environment? How are they supposed to interact with the society they are tasked to protect? These questions have been posed by classical military sociologists as well as by a newer generation of scholars. Yet so far, a comprehensive mapping of the military's potential roles in contemporary society is missing. In this article we contribute to an update of this debate by providing a categorisation of the different roles and tasks that the military institution plays in current industrialised democratic states. We identify three core roles, each divided into subroles, by drawing on an extensive reading of 70 National White Papers and Security Strategies from 37 OECD member states: (collective) defence, collective security, and aid to the nation. We analyse how these roles and tasks influence recent configurations in civil-military relations. This study thereby contributes with: (1) a useful illustration of the military's shifting roles and tasks in contemporary society; (2) increased understandings of how the different roles impact civil-military relations and related to this; and (3) a practical starting point for further analyses of the military organisation's internal challenges related to its, at times, contradictory roles.

Academic research on civil-military relations often assumes that dangers for democracy and civilian control mainly emanate from the military's predisposition of ‘pushing’ its way into politics. Yet, civilian control frequently is a precondition for governments’ moves of ‘pulling’ the military into roles that may potentially be problematic. These can include the military's involvement in political disputes or internal public security missions. Notwithstanding its empirical relevance, little academic work has been devoted to understanding how ‘pulling’ works. In this article, we aim to provide a first, exploratory framework of ‘pulling’ that captures the dynamics of the military's reactions and indirect consequences for civil-military relations. We identify three analytically distinct phases in which pulling occurs. First, politicians initiate either operational or political pulling moves. Second, we situate the military's reaction on a spectrum that ranges from refusal to non-conditional compliance. This reaction is driven by the military's role conceptions about appropriate missions and their relation to politics. In a third phase, the military may slowly start shifting its role conceptions to adapt to its new roles. We illustrate our argument with case studies of two different instances of pulling: operational pulling in the case of France (2015–19) and operational – then-turned-political – pulling in the case of Brazil (2010–20).