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Concept
Civilian control of the military
Summary
Civilian control of the military is a doctrine in military and political science that places ultimate responsibility for a country's strategic decision-making in the hands of the civilian political leadership, rather than professional military officers.
Civilian oversight over militaries, mainly used in democratic governments, puts the power to take military action in the hands of a civilian leader or legislative agency. Allowing the civilian component of government to retain control over the military or state security shows a healthy respect for democratic values and good governance. Giving power to the civilian component of the government over what the military can do and how much money it can spend protects the democratic process from abuse. Nations that can achieve legitimate relationship between the two structures serves to be more effective and provide accountability between government and military. Security relies on both sides compromising on the civilian and security needs to find the best resulting arrangement. Making the effectiveness of this type of arrangement does not rely on equipment quality or number of men, but how the two systems work together. A government and military must agree to confine the military to the rule of law and submit to government oversight to make an effective security apparatus possible. Transparency has taken hold throughout the international system to improve bureaucracy and the democratization of both democratic countries and resistant authoritarian holdovers. This has grown to involve the armed forces/security forces themselves to work towards the international norm of fully liberalizing these organizations.
Civilian control is often seen as a prerequisite feature of a stable liberal democracy. Use of the term in scholarly analyses tends to take place in the context of a democracy governed by elected officials, though the subordination of the military to political control is not unique to these societies. One example is People's Republic of China.
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