The "Democratic Soldier": Comparing Concepts and Practices in Europe

Abstract

The post‐Cold War security environment, including the prevalence of unconventional security risks and an increase of armed conflicts within state borders, has created fundamental changes in the nature of democratic civil‐military relations and security sector governance more broadly. Democratic governments now call more and more upon the armed forces to fulfil somewhat fuzzy tasks – partly civilian, partly humanitarian, partly military – in complex multinational missions and beyond the traditional rationale of defence, not least in domestic affairs.2 In many countries military structures have been transformed for these new types of deployments, which fall both geographically out of area and thematically outside conventional defence imperatives. In view of the tremendous changes that have been wrought, it is astonishing that public attention and political debate on the possible implications of these new types of military missions have remained so limited in most of the countries concerned. This paper argues that this disconnect between new political practices and democratic contestation is both a result and an expression of the increased complexity of internal and external factors influencing how democracies shape their security policies and the institutions of their security sectors,3 among which the military still occupies a prominent place.