Civil-Military Relations and Global Security Governance

What are the problems with Samuel Huntington’s views about civil-military relations? Why do military coups persist in countries such as Pakistan, and what might be done to reduce their likelihood? In a study drawing upon extensive interview research in Pakistan, Cornelia Baciu argues that international organisations can help create a framework of security governance which can have a positive impact upon the political roles assumed by the military.

Her 2021 book Civil-Military Relations and Global Security Governance Strategy: Hybrid Orders and the Case of Pakistan investigates the relationship between international security governance, democratic civil-military relations and the relevance of strategy, as well as of absolute and relative gains, in norms formation in hybrid orders.

Highlighting caveats of the legacy of Huntington’s paradigm of military professionalism, the book applies a robust methodology and data collected in four sample regions in Pakistan. It gauges the effects of international and local actors’ support in the Security Sector Reform domain and examines instances of civil-military interactions and military transition. The book also analyses determinants and strategies that can influence them to demonstrate the impact of global governance in norms diffusion, as well as of absolute and relative utility gains and incentives in normative change. The author generates a new theory pertaining to international organisations and actors as determinants of transformation processes and consequently sheds new light on the issue of global security governance, especially its impact on civil-military relations and democratisation in hybrid orders.

Cornelia Baciu is a researcher at the Centre for Military Studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. She specialises in international security organizations and conflict research. 

Duncan McCargo is Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.

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