Toward a Theory of Civil–Military Punishment

Abstract

This article addresses a significant question in American civil–military relations: under what conditions will civilian principals punish military leaders for shirking? In order to inductively derive a theory of civil–military punishment, the authors examine two cases of military shirking where there is little doubt that insubordination occurred. The first case the authors analyze is Douglas MacArthur’s insubordination under Harry Truman during the Korean War, and the second is Colin Powell’s scuttling of Bill Clinton’s plan to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military in late 1992 and early 1993. This analysis indicates that two factors are linked to civil–military punishment. First, the salience of the issue at stake determines whether he or she decides to punish shirking. The second factor linked to punishment is whether or not the civilian has the military’s support to pursue punishment.

Bargaining with the Military: How Presidents Manage the Political Costs of Civilian Control

“…15 While more recent work has gone further in attempting to specify the conditions under which civilian leaders might punish "shirking" agents -notably when the issue carries high salience for the principal and the civilian has the military's support to pursue punishment -it is limited by its exclusive focus on cases involving clear insubordination. 16 Most real-world instances of "shirking" occupy a much greyer area, and presidents may reasonably worry about the public revelation of a divergence 11 Peter Feaver, in Kori Schake et al, "Masters and Commanders: Are Civil-Military of preferences even when the military "works." As such, we are still left with a gap in the literature on what steps a president might take ex ante not simply to detect and punish clear cases of "shirking" but to manage or offset the political risks associated with asking the military to do something they would rather not do in the first place.…”