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Varieties of Militarism: Towards a Typology
The final published version of this manuscript is available in Security Dialogue vol 49, no 1-
2, pp. 96-108: https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010617730948
DOI: 10.1177/0967010617730948
Accepted for Publication: 6/7/2017
Bryan Mabee
School of Politics and International Relations
Queen Mary, University of London
b.mabee@qmul.ac.uk
Srdjan Vucetic
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
University of Ottawa
Srdjan.Vucetic@uottawa.ca
Abstract:
Militarism—a mercurial, endlessly contested concept—is experiencing a renaissance of sorts
in many corners of the social science community. In critical security studies, the concept’s
purview has become increasingly limited by an abiding theoretical and analytical focus on
various practices of securitisation. We argue that there is a need to clarify the logic and stakes
of different forms of militarism. Critical security scholars have provided valuable insights into
the conditions of ‘exceptionalist militarism.’ However, if we accept that militarism and the
production of security are co-constitutive, then we have every reason to consider different
manifestations of militarism, their historical trajectories and their inter-relationships. To that
end, we draw on the work of historical sociologists and articulate three more ideal types of
militarism: nation-state militarism, civil society militarism, and neoliberal militarism. We
suggest this typology can more adequately capture key transformations of militarism in the
modern period as well as inform further research on the militarism-security nexus.
Introduction
Scholarship on militarism is going through a lean period in the study of security. Critical
security studies (CSS) is no exception: the ‘classic’ concerns of the literature on militarism as
political violence—its causes, effects, phasing, evolution—are of little or no interest in a field
increasingly devoted to ‘new wars,’ new technologies of war, ‘liberal war’ and notions of risk
(Stavrianakis and Selby, 2012a). If it were not for a steady stream of scholarly production on
the subject coming mainly from feminist theorists in select outlets, one would be tempted to
conclude the study of militarism is now the province of sociologists and geographers. One
exception is the work on securitisation—the critical scrutiny of the ways in which
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constitutional or ‘normal’ politics are transformed, via speech acts, into ‘exceptions’.
Conceived in the late 1980s and early 1990s as part of an agenda that sought to orient
research away from the undue reduction of security to military affairs, securitisation theory
eventually came to accept the centrality of military power to the emergence and development
of security issues (Doty, 1998-9; Neumann, 1998). Today, it can be said that securitisation
theory has inspired a whole body of research on what can be called ‘exceptionalist
militarism’.
In this article we attempt to situate this unsung contribution of securitisation studies in
the established research tradition on militarism in historical sociology. Drawing on the
contributions of Michael Mann and Martin Shaw, and specifically the idea that militarisms
can be distinguished in terms of the ‘typical social forces’ and ‘prevailing social relations’ as
their ‘core determinants,’ we situate ‘exceptionalist militarism’ in a typology that also
includes ‘nation-state militarism,’ ‘civil society militarism’ and ‘neoliberal militarism’. An
engagement with the broader concept and practices of militarism would advantage CSS by
drawing attention to the social and historical context in which security is produced. If we
accept that militarism and the production of security are co-constitutive, then we have every
reason to consider different manifestations of militarism, their historical trajectories and their
inter-relationships. We begin by situating the core literature on militarism in the in the context
of recent debates from CSS. Drawing on the contributions of Mann and Shaw, we then
develop a typology of militarisms that yields our four ideal types. After reflecting on the ways
in which this typology could be useful to CSS, we conclude with some thoughts on the future
study of militarism and its relation to security.
Wherefore Militarism?
While the study of security retains at its core the study of military power, much of what this
entails is taken for granted and subjected to a real neglect due to established norms
concerning the scope and uses of military power. This applies broadly to both ‘realist’ and
‘liberal’ investigations of military power, as typified in the U.S. context by normative
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invocations around the use of force or reoccurring policy debates concerning the ‘correct’
levels of military spending (e.g., Foreign Affairs, 2016, c.f. Mabee and Vucetic, 2017). For
over two decades, CSS scholars have shown the limits of such perspectives: established
categories of analysis often obfuscate as much as they illuminate, to say nothing of failing to
match new realities. Looking at the substantive contents of a leading CSS textbook (Peoples
and Vaughan-Williams, 2014), we see that the expansion of the study of security now
fruitfully includes: environmental security, health, homeland security and the ‘war against
terror’, human security and development, migration and border security, and technology and
warfare in the information age. What we do not see, however, is a sustained attention to the
concept of militarism. Similarly, the two leading CSS journals – International Political
Sociology and Security Dialogue – have published very few pieces where the main focus is on
militarism (or militarisation).
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Although overlaps exist between militarism on the one hand
and areas such as ecology and policing on the other, this literature has not been fully engaged
with the military as an institution, or in terms of the ideology of militarism (Stavrianakis and
Selby, 2012a: 10). Overall, the theoretical and analytical focus of CSS has tended to be on the
ways in which ‘violence’ is brought into areas beyond that of direct interest to the military
rather than on the continued relevance of the military as key institution of power. This indeed
is the necessary context for understanding the recent creation of separate journal that deals
directly with issues to do with the military – Critical Military Studies (there is also an
emergent field of Critical War Studies with overlapping themes, that relies on a similar
critique of CSS: see Barkawi, 2011). We think the reasons behind this systematic side-lining
of militarism in CSS lie in the genealogy of the field, and specifically the attempt of some of
its progenitors to move the study of security away from the study of military affairs (Buzan &
Wæver, 1997: 242). This has been accomplished: CSS contributions to the knowledge of
other ‘sectors’ of security, of sovereign authority, of politics and the political are all
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For International Political Sociology, from 2007-2017, there were only four articles with some variation on
‘militarism’ or ‘militarization’ in the title and five in the abstract (adding up to six overall). In Security Dialogue,
between 2002-2017, there were no articles with ‘militarism’ in the title, one with ‘militarization’; and two with
‘militarism’ in the abstract; a search of ‘militarism’, ‘militarized’ and ‘militarization’ as a ‘topic’ yielded 10
results. Details available upon request.
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significant and influential (Wæver, 2011). However, it is now time to bring military affairs
back in, and specifically militarism.
It is important to recognize the concept’s essential ambiguities (Berghahn, 1984).
Semantically, the acquisition of the potential for force or the relative weight and importance
of the state’s military in relation to its society (see the Global Militarization Index by the
Bonn International Center for Conversion, for example) is sometimes conflated with the
disposition to use force (‘militarism’), which in turn confuses debates over hypothesised
cause-effect relationships between the two processes. More fundamentally, conceptual
ambiguities are sociological and philosophical. In the classic work by John Gillis (1989), for
example, the militarism-militarisation distinction is linked to social stratification and
modernisation, with the analysis apprehending the difference between a class approach to
militarism (‘militarism’ thus describing the domination of society by an atavistic social class)
and one that saw militarism as a form of economic life (‘militarisation’ thus depicting forms
of industrialisation with the military at their core). Begin with an alternative social theory, as
Catherine Lutz (2002) does, and militarisation becomes the discursive production of symbolic
and representational militarised realities. This is also why different scholars interpret the
‘same’ militarised realities so differently: the nature of the military/police distinction (Weiss,
2011; Neocleous, 2014) or the rise of the ‘virtual’/‘virtuous war’ (Ignatieff, 2000; Der Derian,
2001), for example.
In historical sociology, and especially the neo-Weberian historical sociology of the 1970s
and 1980s, the question of conceptualisation revolves around two basic questions: how
fundamental is militarism to political and social life? (i.e. is it a property of all states and
societies?); and how does the historicity of the concept of militarism frame our explanations
of it? (Shaw 2012). Mann, in the context of his broader studies of social power, has dealt with
these core issues through a series of macro-sociological and typological frameworks that
looked at the phasing and co-evolution of militarism on the one hand and different types of
states, forms of popular sovereignty, and racial ideologies on the other (Mann, 1988, 1996;
c.f. 1993). His main argument is that understanding modern society requires sustained
attention to militarism, which he defines as ‘a set of attitudes and social practises which
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regards war and the preparation for war as a normal and desirable social activity’ (1987: 166;
also see Eastwood, this issue).
Mann’s expansive conception of militarism can be productive for CSS because it links
both disposition and social purpose. Preparing for war (including the institutionalisation of
militaries, and the networks of logistics and production required to support them) will exist
wherever military power is seen as useful, both internally (e.g. for pacifying populations,
economic growth) and externally (e.g. for achieving expansive goals). In this way, militarism
research orients itself to the general questions of social and political order rather than the
more specific questions such as those around military capitalisation and civilian control. This
is in line with the vision of CSS for two reasons. First, it alerts us to the agents operating
outside, or parallel to, state structures, which, as Mann argues, are responsible for some of the
most ferocious manifestations of militarism in history. Second, it highlights military power as
that which circulates, and is embodied, beyond the state rather than something that is or is not
controlled by assorted state actors, as in liberal and institutionalist theories (e.g. Caverley
2014).
In more recent work, Mann has moved to define militarism in terms of ideological power,
specifically that related to patriarchy and masculinity (for example: 2012, 134; c.f. Mann,
1986a). This offers yet another useful connection with CSS, this time via the rich feminist and
gender literature on militarism (see, inter alia, Dyvik and Greenwood, 2016; Sjoberg and Via,
2010; Wibben, this issue). While focusing more on the micro level (and generally more
culturally orientated in its conceptualisation and operationalisation of militarism), this work
provides an important foundation for macro work. Furthermore, to the extent that sociologists
are interested in explaining properties and actions of individual agents, their focus is
undeniably on collective phenomena that are not reducible to the actions, beliefs or desires of
any single member of a given society. However, a good sociological account always looks at
the relations, processes and mechanisms by which social (or sociocultural) structures
constrain individual action and interaction as well as for the relations, processes and
mechanisms by which individual action and interaction produces social structures (see
Alexander and Gieson, 1987; and Layder, 1994). This is why we think our typology could