Normative Perspectives on the Armed Forces and Civil–Military Relations

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, alongside ongoing processes of democratic backsliding, has renewed attention to the political role of military institutions and the relationship between armed forces and democratic societies. Political scientists have produced rich empirical and institutional accounts of civil–military relations, from Huntington and Janowitz to Feaver’s principal–agent framework, but the normative questions underlying those accounts have received little sustained philosophical attention. While classical republican thought devoted considerable attention to the armed forces and civil–military relations, contemporary political philosophy and theory has engaged these issues only sporadically. Yet military institutions raise a wide range of important normative questions. This workshop therefore aims to advance normative theorising on military institutions and civil–military relations.