Abstract
Notwithstanding its widespread use, what military professionalism means remains unclear. Some have used it as a synonym for an all-volunteer force, while for others its key ingredient is a technologically modern military or a military organization subordinate to civilian control. In this paper, we review and critically discuss the most common usages of the term military professionalism and conclude that the concept has become severely over-stretched, hampering the production of cumulative knowledge and of military assistance projects. We propose four mid-range concepts to capture in more precise ways the components of military professionalism. For each, we propose definitions that should also help deconstructing deeply-ingrained Western-centric assumptions attached to the concept.
Panel: Military Professionalism in Crisis: The Present and Future of Democratic Civil-Military Relations