An Agency Theory View of the Military Advisor
Abstract
An understanding of civil-military relations provides insight for the military strategist into the interplay between politics and military art. A framework of how civilian leadership and the military relate in formulating national security objectives may prove useful in developing military strategies. In Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations, political scientist Peter Feaver proposes a theory of civil- military relations based on principal-agent theory called Agency theory which defines civil-military relations as the day-to-day strategic interaction between civilian leaders and the military. According to Agency theory, the civilians set oversight measures to monitor the behavior of the military and the military responds based on the probability of its behavior being discovered and its expectation of punishment from civilian leadership. This paper argues that Agency theory can be extended by examining the intangible aspects of the military that contribute to its decision-making and behavior and separating the civilian principal into the President and Congress to better describe American civil- military relations. The examination of the intangible aspects of the military mind concludes that the professional military ethic espoused by political scientist Samuel Huntington and expressed in the Weinberger Doctrine offers insights into the behavior of the military that the purely rationalist approach of Agency theory does not capture. The examination of the separation of the civilian principal into the executive and legislative branches shows that in times of crisis, the military advisor is drawn to the President and his advisors as a source of immediate information.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA477032
Entities
People
- Gilbert E. Petrina
Organizations
- Air University