Interservice Competition and the Political Roles of the Armed Services
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3317336 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Samuel P Huntington (Columbia University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1961 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 40-52 |
| Publication date | 1961-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1976048 |
| OpenAlex | W4240400985 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 5 |
Conventional wisdom" (to purloin a phrase from Galbraith) holds that interservice competition necessarily undermines economy, efficiency, and effective central control in the military establishment. The remedy is further unification, possibly even the merger of the services into a single uniform. The conventional wisdom also holds that political action by military groups necessarily threatens civilian control. The remedy is to "keep the military out of politics." The pattern of American military politics and interservice rivalry since World War II, however, suggests that the conventional wisdom may err in its analysis of their results and falter in its prescription of remedies.Service political controversy between the world wars had two distinguishing characteristics. First, on most issues, a military service, supported, perhaps, by a few satellite groups, struggled against civilian isolationists, pacifists, and economizers. The Navy and the shipbuilding industry fought a lonely battle with the dominant forces in both political parties over naval disarmament. The Army lost its fight for universal service after World War I, and throughout the Twenties clashed with educational, labor, and religious groups over ROTC and with other groups over industrial mobilization preparation. In the annual budget encounters the issue usually was clearly drawn between service supporters who stressed preparedness and their opponents who decried the necessity and the legitimacy of substantial military expenditures. To the extent that the services were in politics, they were involved in conflicts with civilian groups
Battle · Competition (biology · Disarmament · Doctrine · Economics · Legitimacy · Military doctrine · Military service · Navy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Rivalry · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies · History · Law · Military and Defense Studies · Public Administration
Military Leadership, Institutional Change, and Priorities in Military Spending
Italy’s Foreign Military Deployments
Intramilitary Relations and Officer Esprit De Corps in the Emerging Interwar Finnish Armed Forces
Go Big or Go Home? Positive Emotions and Responses to Wartime Success
Escaping the iron cage
Organizational Impediments to Effective Policy on Gulf War Illness
Secret Police Organizations and State Repression
The politics of resource allocation in the post‐cold war pentagon
The New Civil-Military Relations
Of Rivals and Enemies
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,15 |
| Citation span | 1961 - 2026 (66) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |