Research

Dissertation

The literature on civil-military relations tends to focus on the effects of a politicized military on civil governance. In much of the world, poor civil-military relations lead to coups or military dictatorships. However, such outcomes are unknown in consolidated democracies. Even in the context of established democracies, a great deal of scholarship focuses on either the military’s resistance to civilian control (Peter Feaver’s “shirking”) or damage to the military’s reputation from increasing involvement in domestic politics.

Recent work by Michael Robinson identified ways that the military can become “politicized” by the actions of civilian overseers or even just through the shifting of political positions and norms within the electorate and political parties. In this sense, politicization is something that can be done to militaries rather than something they do themselves. Comparative scholarship on civil-military relations indicates that civil-military “pathologies” lead to poor military performance, but the U.S. military, despite notable politicization in the post-Cold War era, remains the most capable in the world. Why has increased politicization failed to limit the production of military capability, or has it done so but the effects are hidden?

Political Animals – Retired and Reserve General Officers in American Politics

American civil-military relations rest on a bedrock of a non-partisan uniformed military, but in recent decades retired general and flag officers have openly campaigned for presidential candidates, culminating with one retired general leading chants of “lock her up” at the 2016 Republican convention and another retired general answering him from the platform at the Democratic convention. In the first century of the republic the military was primarily a reserve force, and generals were often active politicians. As late as 1920 a serving Army general ran for president and nearly won his party’s nomination. This project seeks to establish a dataset of general and flag officer partisan endorsements since 1789.

Women Veterans Running for Congress

In the 2018 midterm election, the popular press got very excited by the large number of women veterans running. In the end, only 11 were major party candidates in the general election. [Authors] have shown that veterans in general do not make stronger candidates than non-veterans, but the overwhelming majority of veteran candidates have been men. With different elements of the public exhibiting strong emotions about women serving in the armed forces, it is possible that voters will respond very differently to women with military experience, possibly actually hurting their candidacies in conservative areas and helping them in more liberal districts. This project measures the performance of candidates against expected performance based on party while controlling for a number of other factors that affect congressional elections outcomes (year-specific party advantage, incumbency, presidential party, etc.). Because the number of women veterans is so small, the first step is compiling a sufficient dataset over a number of election cycles.