Peter D Feaver
Biographic Data
| ID | 250867 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter D Feaver |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter D |
| FAMILY NAME | Feaver |
| SIGNATURE | FEAVER P D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 814 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 31 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Bridging the Theory-Practice Divide in International Relations
Resign in Protest? A Cure Worse Than Most Diseases
Advocates of cultivating a resignation-in-protest ethic understate the costs and exaggerate the benefits. Military officers who believe that the policymaking process is heading in a bad direction already have ample recourse in the form of advising within the chain of command. If their advice is not heeded, it is exceedingly unlikely that the country would be better served by senior officers provoking a civil-military crisis to advertise their pol…
Epilogue
The field has traditionally studied civil-military relations in one of two domains: supreme command, where the great questions of war and peace were decided by the top leaders, or society, where the military institutions sought to establish themselves in relations to the broader civilian world. This special edition emphasizes a third domain: the modern battlefield of complex operations. In that setting the lines between civilian and military are …
Civilians, Soldiers, and the Iraq Surge Decision
January 01 2012 Civilians, Soldiers, and the Iraq Surge Decision Richard K. Betts, Richard K. Betts Richard K. Betts is Director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and Director of the International Security Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Michael C. Desch, Michael C. Desch Michael C. Desch is Profe…
The Right to Be Right
President George W. Bush's Iraq surge decision in late 2006 is an interesting case for civil-military relations theory, in particular, the debate between professional supremacists and civilian supremacists over how much to defer to the military on decisions during war. The professional supremacists argue that the primary problem for civil-military relations during war is ensuring the military an adequate voice and keeping civilians from micromana…
Let’s Get a Second Opinion
Recent scholarship on international institutions has begun to explore potentially powerful indirect pathways by which international institutions may influence states’ domestic politics and thereby influence the foreign policy preferences and strategies of state leaders. In this paper, we provide evidence documenting the indirect impact of institutional cues on public support for the use of force through an analysis of individual-level survey data…
Paying the Human Costs of War
From the Korean War to the current conflict in Iraq, Paying the Human Costs of War examines the ways in which the American public decides whether to support the use of military force. Contrary to the conventional view, the authors demonstrate that the public does not respond reflexively and solely to the number of casualties in a conflict. Instead, the book argues that the public makes reasoned and reasonable cost-benefit calculations for their c…
Debating American Grand Strategy After Major War
Success Matters
Since the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers have worried that the American public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal. Although the public is rightly averse to suffering casualties, the level of popular sensitivity to U.S. military casualties depends critically on the context in which those losses occur. The public's tolerance for the human costs of war is primarily shape…
Civilian Monitoring of U.S. Military Operations in the Information Age
Recent research on U.S. civil-military relations has applied principal-agent logic to analyze the post-cold war friction between civilian authorities and top military commanders. This article proposes a greater emphasis on bargaining to focus on the effects of new monitoring technologies available to the civilian principal in the information age. As monitoring capabilities increase and military agents perceive their autonomy disappearing, tacit b…
Success Matters
Since the Vietnam War, policymakers have worried that the U.S. public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal. 1A combination of circumstances makes the public response to the ongoing war in Iraq during the presidential campaign of 2003-04 an important opportunity to evaluate this hypothesis.First, the war in Iraq is both the most controversial and most deadly U.S. militar…
Choosing your battles
Armed Servants
How do civilians control the military? In his book, Feaver proposes a new theory that treats civil-military relations as a principal-agent relationship, with the civilian executive monitoring the actions of military agents, the “armed servants” of the nation-state.
Soldiers and Civilians
Armées-société
Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick? Veterans in the Political Elite and the American Use of Force
Other research has shown (1) that civilians and the military differ in their views about when and how to use military force; (2) that the opinions of veterans track more closely with military officers than with civilians who never served in the military; and (3) that U.S. civil-military relations shaped Cold War policy debates. We assess whether this opinion gap "matters" for the actual conduct of American foreign policy. We examine the impact of…
Soldiers and Civilians
Overview
Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? (Or Was Anybody Ever a Realist?)
July 01 2000 Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? (Or Was Anybody Ever a Realist?) Peter D. Feaver, Peter D. Feaver Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Gunther Hellmann, Gunther Hellmann Professor of Political Science at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Randall L. Schwel…
Civil-Military Relations
Who will guard the guardians? Political scientists since Plato have sought to answer this, the central question of the civil-military relations subfield. Although civil-military relations is a very broad subject, encompassing the entire range of relationships between the military and civilian society at every level, the field largely focuses on the control or direction of the military by the highest civilian authorities in nation-states. This ess…
Modeling Civil-Military Relations
Crisis as Shirking
The alleged crisis in American civil-military relations is best explained by grounding it in a general theory rather than in an ad hoc exegesis of recent events. This article introduces the agency model, a simple game-theoretic understanding of civil-military relations. According to agency theory, the current friction in American civil-military relations reflects the conflict associated with intrusive monitoring by civilians coupled with military…
Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers
October 01 1997 Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers Peter D. Feaver, Peter D. Feaver Peter D. Feaver is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University. The author is grateful for a Research and Writing Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Scott D. Sagan, Scott D. Sagan Scott D. Sagan is Associate Professor in the Department of …
Neooptimists and the enduring problem of nuclear proliferation
Bridled Ambition
Civil-Military Relations
Who will guard the guardians? Political scientists since Plato have sought to answer this, the central question of the civil-military relations subfield. Although civil-military relations is a very broad subject, encompassing the entire range of relationships between the military and civilian society at every level, the field largely focuses on the control or direction of the military by the highest civilian authorities in nation-states. This ess…
Let’s Get a Second Opinion
Recent scholarship on international institutions has begun to explore potentially powerful indirect pathways by which international institutions may influence states’ domestic politics and thereby influence the foreign policy preferences and strategies of state leaders. In this paper, we provide evidence documenting the indirect impact of institutional cues on public support for the use of force through an analysis of individual-level survey data…
Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick? Veterans in the Political Elite and the American Use of Force
Other research has shown (1) that civilians and the military differ in their views about when and how to use military force; (2) that the opinions of veterans track more closely with military officers than with civilians who never served in the military; and (3) that U.S. civil-military relations shaped Cold War policy debates. We assess whether this opinion gap "matters" for the actual conduct of American foreign policy. We examine the impact of…
The Civil-Military Problematique
The alleged crisis in American civil-military relations has revived a long-standing theoretical debate about the determinants of civilian control. So far, the debate has followed lines of analysis laid by the original dispute between Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz. Viewed from a post-Cold War perspective, however, neither model is attractive. In this article, I define the basic problematique both the Huntingtonian and Janowitzean theories …
Success Matters
Since the Vietnam War, policymakers have worried that the U.S. public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal. 1A combination of circumstances makes the public response to the ongoing war in Iraq during the presidential campaign of 2003-04 an important opportunity to evaluate this hypothesis.First, the war in Iraq is both the most controversial and most deadly U.S. militar…
Success Matters
Since the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers have worried that the American public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal. Although the public is rightly averse to suffering casualties, the level of popular sensitivity to U.S. military casualties depends critically on the context in which those losses occur. The public's tolerance for the human costs of war is primarily shape…
Armed Servants
How do civilians control the military? In his book, Feaver proposes a new theory that treats civil-military relations as a principal-agent relationship, with the civilian executive monitoring the actions of military agents, the “armed servants” of the nation-state.
Choosing your battles
The Right to Be Right
President George W. Bush's Iraq surge decision in late 2006 is an interesting case for civil-military relations theory, in particular, the debate between professional supremacists and civilian supremacists over how much to defer to the military on decisions during war. The professional supremacists argue that the primary problem for civil-military relations during war is ensuring the military an adequate voice and keeping civilians from micromana…
Command and Control in Emerging Nuclear Nations
Soldiers and Civilians
Managing Nuclear Proliferation
The nonproliferation regime, which denies countries access to critical materials, makes it more likely that defiant proliferators will develop unsafe arsenals. In order to manage proliferation, the U.S. could continue to uphold the regime, hoping to persuade the proliferator to return to non-nuclear status. It could attack, thereby ensuring that the proliferator is unable to join the nuclear club. Or it could concede the nonproliferation goal and…
Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? (Or Was Anybody Ever a Realist?)
July 01 2000 Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? (Or Was Anybody Ever a Realist?) Peter D. Feaver, Peter D. Feaver Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Gunther Hellmann, Gunther Hellmann Professor of Political Science at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Randall L. Schwel…
Crisis as Shirking
The alleged crisis in American civil-military relations is best explained by grounding it in a general theory rather than in an ad hoc exegesis of recent events. This article introduces the agency model, a simple game-theoretic understanding of civil-military relations. According to agency theory, the current friction in American civil-military relations reflects the conflict associated with intrusive monitoring by civilians coupled with military…
Proliferation Optimism and Theories of Nuclear Operations
(1993). Proliferation Optimism and Theories of Nuclear Operations. Security Studies: Vol. 2, No. 3-4, pp. 159-191
Optimists, Pessimists, and Theories of Nuclear Proliferation Management
I am indebted to Damon Coletta, Joseph Grieco, Ole Holsti, Peter Lavoy, David Welch, and especially Ben Frankel for their comments on earlier drafts
Resign in Protest? A Cure Worse Than Most Diseases
Advocates of cultivating a resignation-in-protest ethic understate the costs and exaggerate the benefits. Military officers who believe that the policymaking process is heading in a bad direction already have ample recourse in the form of advising within the chain of command. If their advice is not heeded, it is exceedingly unlikely that the country would be better served by senior officers provoking a civil-military crisis to advertise their pol…
Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers
October 01 1997 Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers Peter D. Feaver, Peter D. Feaver Peter D. Feaver is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University. The author is grateful for a Research and Writing Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Scott D. Sagan, Scott D. Sagan Scott D. Sagan is Associate Professor in the Department of …
Neooptimists and the enduring problem of nuclear proliferation
Civilian Monitoring of U.S. Military Operations in the Information Age
Recent research on U.S. civil-military relations has applied principal-agent logic to analyze the post-cold war friction between civilian authorities and top military commanders. This article proposes a greater emphasis on bargaining to focus on the effects of new monitoring technologies available to the civilian principal in the information age. As monitoring capabilities increase and military agents perceive their autonomy disappearing, tacit b…
An American Crisis in Civilian Control and Civil-Military Relations
Who décidés and what do they gct to décidé?1 This is the central normative question in civil-military relations theory, and disagrccment over the correct answer is behind much of what passes for the currcnt 'crisis' in American civil-military relations. So far. the American answer appears to havc solved tire problem that prcoccupies most comparative civil-military relations theorists: how to keep the military from taking over the governmcnt. Yct …
The Politics of Inadvertence
Overview
Civilians, Soldiers, and the Iraq Surge Decision
January 01 2012 Civilians, Soldiers, and the Iraq Surge Decision Richard K. Betts, Richard K. Betts Richard K. Betts is Director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and Director of the International Security Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Michael C. Desch, Michael C. Desch Michael C. Desch is Profe…
Command and Control in Emerging Nuclear Nations
Proliferation Optimism and Theories of Nuclear Operations
(1993). Proliferation Optimism and Theories of Nuclear Operations. Security Studies: Vol. 2, No. 3-4, pp. 159-191
The Politics of Inadvertence
Optimists, Pessimists, and Theories of Nuclear Proliferation Management
I am indebted to Damon Coletta, Joseph Grieco, Ole Holsti, Peter Lavoy, David Welch, and especially Ben Frankel for their comments on earlier drafts
Bridled Ambition
Managing Nuclear Proliferation
The nonproliferation regime, which denies countries access to critical materials, makes it more likely that defiant proliferators will develop unsafe arsenals. In order to manage proliferation, the U.S. could continue to uphold the regime, hoping to persuade the proliferator to return to non-nuclear status. It could attack, thereby ensuring that the proliferator is unable to join the nuclear club. Or it could concede the nonproliferation goal and…
An American Crisis in Civilian Control and Civil-Military Relations
Who décidés and what do they gct to décidé?1 This is the central normative question in civil-military relations theory, and disagrccment over the correct answer is behind much of what passes for the currcnt 'crisis' in American civil-military relations. So far. the American answer appears to havc solved tire problem that prcoccupies most comparative civil-military relations theorists: how to keep the military from taking over the governmcnt. Yct …
The Civil-Military Problematique
The alleged crisis in American civil-military relations has revived a long-standing theoretical debate about the determinants of civilian control. So far, the debate has followed lines of analysis laid by the original dispute between Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz. Viewed from a post-Cold War perspective, however, neither model is attractive. In this article, I define the basic problematique both the Huntingtonian and Janowitzean theories …
Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers
October 01 1997 Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers Peter D. Feaver, Peter D. Feaver Peter D. Feaver is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University. The author is grateful for a Research and Writing Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Scott D. Sagan, Scott D. Sagan Scott D. Sagan is Associate Professor in the Department of …
Neooptimists and the enduring problem of nuclear proliferation
Modeling Civil-Military Relations
Crisis as Shirking
The alleged crisis in American civil-military relations is best explained by grounding it in a general theory rather than in an ad hoc exegesis of recent events. This article introduces the agency model, a simple game-theoretic understanding of civil-military relations. According to agency theory, the current friction in American civil-military relations reflects the conflict associated with intrusive monitoring by civilians coupled with military…
Civil-Military Relations
Who will guard the guardians? Political scientists since Plato have sought to answer this, the central question of the civil-military relations subfield. Although civil-military relations is a very broad subject, encompassing the entire range of relationships between the military and civilian society at every level, the field largely focuses on the control or direction of the military by the highest civilian authorities in nation-states. This ess…
Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? (Or Was Anybody Ever a Realist?)
July 01 2000 Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? (Or Was Anybody Ever a Realist?) Peter D. Feaver, Peter D. Feaver Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Gunther Hellmann, Gunther Hellmann Professor of Political Science at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Randall L. Schwel…
Soldiers and Civilians
Overview
Soldiers and Civilians
Armées-société
Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick? Veterans in the Political Elite and the American Use of Force
Other research has shown (1) that civilians and the military differ in their views about when and how to use military force; (2) that the opinions of veterans track more closely with military officers than with civilians who never served in the military; and (3) that U.S. civil-military relations shaped Cold War policy debates. We assess whether this opinion gap "matters" for the actual conduct of American foreign policy. We examine the impact of…
Armed Servants
How do civilians control the military? In his book, Feaver proposes a new theory that treats civil-military relations as a principal-agent relationship, with the civilian executive monitoring the actions of military agents, the “armed servants” of the nation-state.
Choosing your battles
Success Matters
Since the Vietnam War, policymakers have worried that the U.S. public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal. 1A combination of circumstances makes the public response to the ongoing war in Iraq during the presidential campaign of 2003-04 an important opportunity to evaluate this hypothesis.First, the war in Iraq is both the most controversial and most deadly U.S. militar…
Success Matters
Since the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers have worried that the American public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal. Although the public is rightly averse to suffering casualties, the level of popular sensitivity to U.S. military casualties depends critically on the context in which those losses occur. The public's tolerance for the human costs of war is primarily shape…
Civilian Monitoring of U.S. Military Operations in the Information Age
Recent research on U.S. civil-military relations has applied principal-agent logic to analyze the post-cold war friction between civilian authorities and top military commanders. This article proposes a greater emphasis on bargaining to focus on the effects of new monitoring technologies available to the civilian principal in the information age. As monitoring capabilities increase and military agents perceive their autonomy disappearing, tacit b…
Paying the Human Costs of War
From the Korean War to the current conflict in Iraq, Paying the Human Costs of War examines the ways in which the American public decides whether to support the use of military force. Contrary to the conventional view, the authors demonstrate that the public does not respond reflexively and solely to the number of casualties in a conflict. Instead, the book argues that the public makes reasoned and reasonable cost-benefit calculations for their c…
Political science (29 works) · Law (24 works) · Politics (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (12 works) · Civil–military relations (8 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies (7 works)