Abstract
The purpose of this article is to review and refine the notion of ‘liberal militarism’. It is based on the assumption that no society, even a democratic one, can do without militarism as all of them consent to considerable budgetary efforts to provide for their defence. But this consent and the ways in which it is expressed are prone to variations. More than an exceptional use of force at the international level, or an exaltation of servicemen or of the military within society, the notion of liberal militarism denotes here the social representations ascribed by the political and social actors to defence policy in liberal democracies. Over the past 30 years, defence policy has seen a number of changes towards economic and/or political-cultural liberalisation both in terms of their objectives and in terms of their means. This twin liberalisation process, which took on different forms according to the national cases considered, has given rise to different ‘varieties of liberal militarism’.
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Notes
The list of European countries that have abandoned the military draft since 1990 is as follows: Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovinia, Spain, France, Latvia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania and Slovenia (International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2011).
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A first draft of this note was presented to the ‘Varieties of Militarism’ panel organised by A. Stavrianakis and B. Mabee during the European International Studies Association meeting, 5–8 June 2013, Tartu, Estonia. The authors thank the participants to this workshop as well as French Politics’ editors for their comments.
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Joana, J., Mérand, F. The varieties of liberal militarism: A typology. Fr Polit 12, 177–191 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2014.11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2014.11