Civilian control of the military

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 serve 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 democratisation 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 liberalising these organisations.

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. For example, there is often civilian control of the military in communist states, such as the People's Republic of China. Mao Zedong stated that "Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party," reflecting the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party over the People's Liberation Army.

As noted by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Richard H. Kohn, "civilian control is not a fact but a process". Affirmations of respect for the values of civilian control notwithstanding, the actual level of control sought or achieved by the civilian leadership may vary greatly in practice, from a statement of broad policy goals that military commanders are expected to translate into operational plans, to the direct selection of specific targets for attack on the part of governing politicians. National leaders with limited experience in military matters often have little choice but to rely on the advice of professional military commanders trained in the art and science of warfare to inform the limits of policy; in such cases, the military establishment may enter the bureaucratic arena to advocate for or against a particular course of action, shaping the policy-making process and blurring any clear cut lines of civilian control.

The reverse situation, where professional military officers control national politics, is called a military dictatorship.

A lack of control over the military may result in a state within a state. One author, paraphrasing Samuel P. Huntington's writings in The Soldier and the State, has summarised the civilian control ideal as "the proper subordination of a competent, professional military to the ends of policy as determined by civilian authority".