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"Modern warfare is almost always multilateral to one degree or another, requiring countries to cooperate as allies or coalition partners. Yet as the war in Afghanistan has made abundantly clear, multilateral cooperation is neither straightforward nor guaranteed. Countries differ significantly in what they are willing to do and how and where they are willing to do it. Some refuse to participate in dangerous or offensive missions. Others change tactical objectives with each new commander. Some countries defer to their commanders while others hold them to strict account. NATO in Afghanistan explores how government structures and party politics in NATO countries shape how battles are waged in the field. Drawing on more than 250 interviews with senior officials from around the world, David Auerswald and Stephen Saideman find that domestic constraints in presidential and single-party parliamentary systems--in countries such as the United States and Britain respectively--differ from those in countries with coalition governments, such as Germany and the Netherlands. As a result, different countries craft different guidelines for their forces overseas, most notably in the form of military caveats, the often-controversial limits placed on deployed troops. Providing critical insights into the realities of alliance and coalition warfare, NATO in Afghanistan also looks at non-NATO partners such as Australia, and assesses NATO's performance in the 2011 Libyan campaign to show how these domestic political dynamics are by no means unique to Afghanistan."--

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is the most robust and deeply institutionalized alliance in the modern world, yet it has faced significant problems in running the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Specifically, the coalition effort has been plagued by caveats: restrictions on what coalition militaries can and cannot do. Caveats have diminished the alliance's overall effectiveness and created resentment within the coalition. In this article, we explain why ISAF countries have employed a variety of caveats in Afghanistan, focusing on the period from 2003 to 2009. Caveats vary predictably according to the political institutions in each contributor to ISAF. Troops from coalition governments are likely to have caveats. Troops from presidential or majoritarian parliamentary governments tend, on average, to have fewer caveats, but specific caveats depend on the background of key decision makers in those countries. To demonstrate these points, we first review key limitations facing military contingents in Afghanistan. We then compare the experiences of Canada, France, and Germany and find that our institutional model does a better job of explaining the observed behavior than do competing explanations focusing on public opinion, threat, or strategic culture. We conclude with implications for both research and North Atlantic Treaty Organization's future. Adapted from the source document.

Irredentism & secessionism have been important causes of international conflict in the 1990s, yet few have considered why ethnic groups desire union with kin elsewhere or want to become independent. Why do groups desire independence rather than union with kin, or vice versa? We consider five distinct explanations: (1) the nature of the group itself; (2) characteristics of the group's kin; (3) contagion processes; (4) ethnic security dilemmas; & (5) the end of the Cold War. Using logit, we analyze data from the Minorities at Risk dataset. Our findings support elements of the conventional wisdom: Ethnic kin influence irredentism, & violence between a group & its host state increases secessionism. Contrary to current debates, groups that are more concentrated are more likely to be secessionist. Further, some factors are less important than usually argued: relative size, a group's ethnic distinctiveness, economic & political differences, regime type, & economic growth. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 33 References. Adapted from the source document.

Legislatures vary widely in how they affect democratic civil–military relations. In some countries, legislative oversight plays a critical role in guiding their defense establishment. In others, legislators are largely ignorant and happily so. In this article, we explain the sources of these variations in fifteen democratic states. After discussing the importance of the legislature's role in democratic civil–military relations, we clarify what we mean by oversight. We argue that variations in oversight are explained by the number and scope of legislative committees charged with military oversight and party politics within those committees. After reviewing alternative explanations, we present oversight patterns in fifteen democratic countries across the world. We then briefly examine Germany's Bundestag and Japan's Diet, as the comparison of these cases challenges most existing explanations of legislative oversight and serve as hard cases for our argument. We conclude with implications of legislative oversight for broader debates about civilian control of the military.

AbstractLegislatures vary widely in how they affect democratic civil–military relations. In some countries, legislative oversight plays a critical role in guiding their defense establishment. In others, legislators are largely ignorant and happily so. In this article, we explain the sources of these variations in fifteen democratic states. After discussing the importance of the legislature's role in democratic civil–military relations, we clarify what we mean by oversight. We argue that variations in oversight are explained by the number and scope of legislative committees charged with military oversight and party politics within those committees. After reviewing alternative explanations, we present oversight patterns in fifteen democratic countries across the world. We then briefly examine Germany's Bundestag and Japan's Diet, as the comparison of these cases challenges most existing explanations of legislative oversight and serve as hard cases for our argument. We conclude with implications of legislative oversight for broader debates about civilian control of the military.

Why do some minorities seek affirmative action while others pursue territorial autonomy or secession, given similar conditions at the substate level? This article attempts to unpack the puzzle of minority radicalization, focusing on group claim-making as an important dynamic that has been overlooked by much of the recent quantitative literature on ethnic conflict. To address this gap, the authors introduce a new `claims' variable, which codes the demands made by groups in the Minorities at Risk dataset for three five-year periods from 1985 to 2000. The authors examine the relationship between minority claim-making and rebellion and conclude that they are similar but distinct forms of group mobilization. Groups use claims as a means of bargaining with the center; relative power, therefore, has a critical influence on the extremity of demands that groups advance against the government. The authors test this model against alternative arguments using ordinal logit analysis and find that factors related to strategic power — including a history of autonomy, outside military support, and territorial concentration — are all positively correlated with a group's propensity to advance more extreme demands. This study shows that minorities with greater power vis-à-vis the center are more likely to both rebel and mobilize around separatist demands. However, minority rebellion — unlike separatist claims — may also be triggered by group deprivation, indicating that violent resistance may be driven by grievances as well as opportunities.