Officers or Office Space? Perceptions of Military Professionalism by the Public

• In Event: Civil-Military Relations and US Foreign Policy

Abstract

At a time when the foreign policy establishment is being challenged, why does the American public still place such confidence in the US military's expertise and competence? Over the past century, the United States military has both professionalized and bureaucratized. We argue that despite being vilified within the military, bureaucratization has been fundamental to the military's development as a profession. It has been to the military's advantage, however, to distance itself from "government bureaucrats" and position itself as an apolitical profession, set apart from the rest of government, for the sake of inspiring public confidence. We examine media coverage of the military to track the evolution of perceptions of the U.S. military as bureaucracy and profession over time, and correlate this new data with existing data sets on public trust in the military, and perceptions of partisanship and competence.

Authors

• Doyle Hodges, War on the Rocks

• Jessica D Blankshain, Naval War College