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Institutional response to terrorism : the domestic role of the military in consolidated democracies

Terrorism, as an act of war, has produced new challenges for states and their militaries in the modern era. A typical response for governments that face a terrorist threat is to reassess their institutional posture toward handling such assaults on their territorial sovereignty, to include a redefinition of the conditions under which their militaries may be used to defend and protect domestic interests. This study aims to determine the conditions under which and to what degree a civilian authority's restructuring of its counterterrorism policy alters civil-military relations within that state, specifically examining the institutional and constitutional constraints under which governments formulate their military's role in counterterrorism policy; the type of institutional arrangement that seems most conducive to a powerful military role in a state's counterterrorism policy; and an exploration of the expansion of military authority in response to terrorism in the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Spain. I argue that democratic states will expand the role and responsibilities of their militaries into what were formerly civilian areas of responsibility as a key tool in the implementation of their counterterrorism policy when military authority is only loosely circumscribed by state constitutional and legislative documents; the military has a history of strong participation in the formulation (versus simply implementation) of a state's national security doctrine; and the military maintains an exalted role in national history and is viewed by the citizenry as a core institution of national identity, and the government is facing both high internal and external threat levels. This study is based on the assumption that institutional arrangements play a significant role in the policymaking process, employing the paradigm of Historical Institutionalism to explain how changes within institutions alter civil-military relations in the context of counterterrorism policy, and vice versa. / text

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/23443
Date07 March 2014
CreatorsBean, Jennifer Michelle
Source SetsUniversity of Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Formatelectronic
RightsCopyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.

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