Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, And Civil-Military Relat

Description:
How do civilians control the military? In the wake of September 11, the renewed presence of national security in everyday life has made this question all the more pressing. In this book, Peter Feaver proposes an ambitious new theory that treats civil-military relations as a principal-agent relationship, with the civilian executive monitoring the actions of military agents, the 'armed servants' of the nationstate. Military obedience is not automatic but depends on strategic calculations of whether civilians will catch and punish misbehavior.

Review:
'Peter Feaver's excellent new book, Armed Servants, sheds much-needed light on civil-military relations in the U.S., indeed, it may come to supplant Samuel Huntington's classic 1957 study of American civil-military relations, The Soldier and the State. Armed Servants should be read not only by academic specialists in national security, but also by military professionals - it will change the way they think about these issues.' - Mackubin Thomas Owens, National Review; 'Feaver has written one of the best books on civil-military relations in several years... Armed Servants was largely completed before September 11th and published before the second Gulf War, but its implications for both are clear. Agency theory must now be accounted for in civil-military relations, thanks to Feaver.' - C. E. Welch, Choice'