Abstract /
In modern democracy, we expect that civilians will control the armed forces. Our theories of civil-military relations tend to assume that various actors engage in oversight, that the armed forces anticipate this oversight so that they behave as the civilians intend. However, it is increasingly clear that we have overestimated the ability and interest by various civilian actors including parliaments and defense agencies, so that there may be far less oversight than expected. In this talk, I present findings from a completed project on parliaments and militaries and some provisional findings from a new project on defense agencies to suggest that there are far fewer civilians engaged in significant oversight over the armed forces of many democracies.
Speaker bio /
Stephen Saideman holds the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and is the Director of the Canadian Defence and Security Network. He has written four books: The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict; For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War (with R. William Ayres); NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (with David Auerswald); and Adapting in the Dust: Lessons Learned from Canada’s War in Afghanistan, edited two others, and published articles and chapters on nationalism, ethnic conflict, civil war, alliance dynamics, and civil-military relations. Prof. Saideman has received fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Social Sciences Research Council, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The first placed Saideman on the Bosnia desk of the Strategic Planning and Policy Directorate of US Joint Staff for a year, the second facilitated research in Japan, and the third placed him as a Fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin. He taught previously at the University of Vermont, Texas Tech University, and McGill University. He writes online at saideman.blogspot.com. He has won awards for teaching, for mentoring other faculty, for public engagement, and for his blogging on international studies. His social media address on a variety of outlets is @smsaideman. He is a co-host of the Battle Rhythm podcast, which is part of the CDSN Podcast Network His work of late has focused on figuring out who the civilians are who are supposed to be overseeing the armed forces of modern democracies and why they vary so much in how they do oversight.