Since the end of the Cold War almost all European countries have reformed their armed forces, focusing on downsizing, internationalization and professionalization.
While in many countries military structures have been transformed for new types of deployments - partly civilian, partly humanitarian, partly military tasks in complex multinational missions - public attention and political debates on possible implications have remained very limited.
In her study The "Democratic Soldier": Comparing Concepts and Practices in Europe, Sabine Mannitz examines changes in the normative model underlying the military's relationship to democracy. Drawing on a comparative analysis of 12 post-socialist, traditional and consolidated democracies in Europe, the different dimensions of the national conception of soldiering are analyzed based on the official norms that define a country’s military and the ways in which individual members of the armed forces see their role.
Cases converge around the new idea of professional soldiering as a merging of civilian skills with military virtues in the context of the military’s new post-Cold War missions. Yet despite this convergence, research also shows that specific aspects of national traditions and context continue to influence the actual practice of soldiering in each case. The contradictions that result between these old and new visions of the role of the military and the soldier illustrate the tensions that exist between political goals and defence reform dynamics.
The paper draws on the research project "The Image of the Democratic Soldier" that was conducted at PRIF with a Volkswagen Foundation grant and was directed by Sabine Mannitz.
The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces (DCAF) is an international foundation whose mission is to assist the international community in pursuing good governance and reform of the security sector. SSR Papers is a flagship DCAF publication series intended to contribute innovative thinking on important themes and approaches relating to security sector reform (SSR) in the broader context of security sector governance (SSG).
The paper is available as free PDF at DCAF.