After the Cold War came to an end, European countries in both East and West faced the common question of how their military organizations and those of their neighbors would respond to shifts in international relations affecting their economies, their perception of globalized threats, and cross-national security management. It is undisputed, for example, that in well-developed democratic societies, the challenge to the legitimacy of the military in society, the decreasing subjective apprehension of threat, and growing opposition to systems of universal conscription have been linked to gains in wealth and living standards. This volume seeks, by empirically measuring social indicators, to assess the current state of civil-military relations in a number of countries in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Russia) as well as the state of relations in several of their Western European counterparts (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands). The country studies describe and analyze the differing positions of the military in their specific national settings.

This new edition of the volume is presented on the wave of the success which had its first edition (2003). It is entirely updated to the current situation of the disciplines covered, and expanded with particular regard to the new missions, that have become the main challenge for the armed forces in these first decades of the new millennium, with new insights to technological development toward so-called cyborg warriors, new forms of leadership and changes in soldier's identity and organisational culture. It is compiled of documents coming from various researchers at universities around the world as well as military officers devoted to the sector of study. Covered in this volume is a historical excursus of studies prior to contemporary research, interpretive models and theoretical approaches developed specifically for this topic, civic-military relations including issues surrounding democratic control of the armed forces, military culture, professional training, conditions and problems of minorities in the armed forces, an examination of the structural change within the military over the years including new duties and functions following the Cold War.

Over the past several decades, democracy has taken root or been re-established in a number of countries with support from other democratic states and private groups. While the increase in the number of democracies worldwide has been widely heralded, very little has been written on how democracy can be protected and sustained where it has been chosen by the people of a state. In this first comprehensive guide to preventing and responding to threats to coups and erosions in democracies. Through case studies and in-depth analyses, this book provides legal and policy justification for these processes and discusses how they can be made more effective, combining the findings of an international task force on threats to democracy with contributions from leading scholars and policymakers.

Designed as a textbook and interdisciplinary reference for the social sciences, this volume examines key issues in the current global security agenda and relationships between armed forces and society around the world. The book's concise chapters - on a broad range of themes related to national and international security, military sociology, and civil-military relations - were written by experts from 18 countries. This volume also has a groundbreaking section, which - using country studies and regional overviews - discusses civil-military relations in as well as the most salient theoretical and practical features of current means of democratic control of the armed forces in the early 21st century.

The volume deals with the fundamentals of the contemporary relations between civic actors and state power structures. The main focus lies on public control of armed forces and the question of why civilians should have a vigilant eye on the military institution as well as the civilian authority that legitimizes the use of force. Based on the example of conscription and recruitment as an intersection between the military and society, this study engages in an analysis of institutional change in the politico-military field in post-Soviet Russia. Taking a critical stance on conventional military sociology, the book shifts the focus away from the exclusive power relationship between political and military elites in the context of national security. Instead, it takes into consideration human and societal security, i.e. the needs and demands of individuals and groups at the grassroots level, affected by the military and the prevailing security situation in Russia. The book addresses readers with an interest in civil-military relations, contemporary Russian affairs, and social movement theories.

The present anthology stems from the perception of a widespread and manifest uneasiness concerning the business of military intervention in our times. Indeed, the West is for quite some time engaged in a deep introspection about his military intervention policies in the years to come and reflects about this. What will Western military intervention policies look like in the future; what kind of military intervention policies is wanted and what kind of military intervention policies is financially, politically and socio-culturally possible and militarily feasible? The hypothesis pursued in this volume states that, in the foreseeable future, we may see a different kind of military intervention policy and intervention posture of the West that will lead to different military interventions. It may be argued that we are witnessing the dawn of a new era, the era of military post-interventionism.

This work attempts to clarify the major problems facing Russia's armed forces in the present and immediate future. It covers threats from terrorists, break away republics and threats from outside Russia's borders. The book also includes political and economic problems facing the military.

This book examines the ways in which European democracies, including former communist states, are dealing with the new demands placed on their security policies since the cold war by transforming their military structures, and the effects this is having on the conceptualisation of soldiering. In the new security environment, democratic states have called upon their armed forces increasingly to fulfil unconventional tasks - partly civilian, partly humanitarian, and partly military - in most complex, multi-national missions. Not only have military structures been transformed to make them fit for these new types of deployments, but the new mission types highlight the necessity for democracies to come to terms with a new image and ethos of soldiering in defence of a transnational value community. Combining a qualitative comparison of twelve countries with an interdisciplinary methodology, this edited volume argues that the ongoing transformations of international politics make it necessary for democracies to address both internal and external factors as they shape their own civil-military relations. The issues discussed in this work are informed by Democratic Peace theory, which makes it possible to investigate relations within the state at the same time as analysing the international dimension. This approach gives the book a systematic theoretical framework which distinguishes it from the majority of existing literature on this subject. This book will be of much interest to students of civil-military relations, European politics, democratisation and post-communist transitions, and IR in general.

Summary: This volume contains revised versions of a select number of research papers presented at a conference in Oslo, Norway, entitled "The New International Law." The conference was subtitled "Polycentric decision-making structures and fragmented spheres of law: what implications for the new generation of international legal discourse?" The current discourse of international law is certainly acquainted with the enormous challenges posed by rapid restructuring of domestic and international governance to conventional outlooks, theories and practices of international law. Today's research forefront thrives on studies that encapsulate, analyse and discuss the shift from a world made up of sovereign nation-states to today's inter-, supra- and transnational arrangements.

In recent decades, historians of early-modern Europe, and above all those who study the eighteenth century, have elaborated the concept of what has been called the 'fiscal-military state'. This is a state whose international effectiveness was founded upon the development of large armed forces, whose performance and supply necessitated both further administrative development and the provision of large sums, the raising of which involved unprecedented levels of taxation and borrowing by governments. The present collection of essays, by leading authorities in their individual fields, all of whom have published widely on their chosen topic, explores the subject of the fiscal-military state by focusing on its leading exemplars in eighteenth-century Europe: Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and Russia. It also includes a chapter on the Savoyard state (the kingdom of Sardinia), a lesser power whose career illuminates by comparison developments elsewhere. In addition, and rather unusually, a further chapter considers the fiscal-military state in a broader, comparative international context, in the arena of international relations. Each chapter provides a summary of the state of knowledge regarding the fiscal-military state debate insofar as it relates to the state under consideration. As well as contributing to that debate, they take matters further by systematically analysing the sources of wealth and income, and the way these were tapped, and the broader impact that this attempt to extract resources had on society and the state, both in the short and longer term. The differing patterns, and the variety of models of fiscal-military state makes for ease of comparison across Europe, making the volume an invaluable resource to both students and researchers alike.