Entrepreneurs of Legitimate Violence: Military Elites and the Norms of War

• In Event: The Politics and Influence of Military Service

Abstract

How is it that norms come to shape military doctrine? I argue that both realist and constructivists treat militaries as objects of normative constraints. In contrast, I suggest military elites are crucial “norm entrepreneurs,” agents that create the norms of war. To gain resources and autonomy, military elites, particularly those in democracies, must justify their strategies with arguments that demonstrate, not only that their doctrines are effective and efficient, but ethical as well. Military elites’ efforts to justify their doctrines are strategic, designed to advance their organizational interests. Yet when military elites make normative arguments, this has three significant effects. First, it settles debates over which norms should shape doctrine. Second, it creates hypocrisy costs that force military elites begin to fit their doctrines to normative constraints. Finally, when military elites use normative arguments, they do not merely echo existing norms; in turning norms into concrete doctrine, they redefine the meaning of the norm itself, fixing how the norm should operate in practice, sometimes in ways that undercuts the original underlying principles themselves. I demonstrate this theory through the case of the US air services justification of aerial bombardment during the Second World War.

Author

• Stacie E. Goddard, Wellesley College