From Professional to Partisan: Civil-Military Norm Replacement in Eroding Democracies

Summary:

In this seminar, Risa Brooks will discuss how political leaders transform professional militaries into partisan aligned forces in eroding democracies. Building from theories of norm change, her research conceptualizes the process as one of "norm replacement," using examples from the United States and beyond to illustrate the argument. 

Bio:

Dr. Risa Brooks is Allis-Chalmers Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, a non-resident fellow in the Future Security program at New America and non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She is the author of Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton University Press), coeditor (with Elizabeth Stanley) of Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford University Press), and coeditor (with Lionel Beehner and Daniel Maurer) of Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: Politics, Society and Modern War (Oxford University Press). Her research has appeared in academic journals such as The Annual Review of Political Science, International Security and Security Studies and her commentaries have been featured in Foreign Affairs, War on the Rocks, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Brooks received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, and formerly held positions as Senior Fellow at West Point’s Modern War Institute, research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, U.K. and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her primary research interests lie in questions related to U.S. and comparative civil-military relations, military effectiveness, strategic assessment and military professionalism.