Armed Servants

"In this book, Peter Feaver proposes an ambitious new theory of civil-military relations in which the civil-military connection is best conceived as a principal-agent relationship, with the civilian executive directing and monitoring the actions of military agents, the "armed servants" of the nation-state. Military obedience is not automatic. It depends on the calculations of both parties, which determine whether the connection will be tight or loose.". "This model challenges Samuel Huntington's professionalism-based model of civil-military relations, and provides an innovative way of making…