Book Review: John L Clarke, What Should Armies Do? Armed Forces and Civil Security
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| Author | Ignas Kalpokas |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916649836 |
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsGeneral Politics |
452 Political Studies Review 14 (3)
What Should Armies Do? Armed Forces
and Civil Security by John L Clarke.
Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. 159pp., £60.00 (h/b),
ISBN 9781472445261
In most Western countries, armies have faced a
downward spiral: unable to fully justify their
existence in the post-Cold War era, they have
faced cuts in both funding and numbers (espe-
cially during times of austerity) and are
increasingly often being used for non-military
tasks, with negative effects on combat readi-
ness. Hence, John L Clarke’s book What
Should Armies Do? offers a timely analysis of
this period of change, with clear prescriptions
as to what is and what is not in both the army’s
and society’s interest.
Indeed, the focus of the military has
shifted. While the traditional understanding
was that an army defends the country from
outside threat, more recently, armies have
started to face inwards. There are at least three
causes for this change: the domestic threat of
terrorism, the military’s search for a new rai-
son d’être, and the ease with which tasks can
be delegated to the military (i.e. armies sup-
posedly can do more without extra funding).
As a result, especially in Europe, armies have
been increasingly used for civil security tasks
as well. These tasks include support for law
enforcement agencies (such as riot control),
disaster relief, and ad hoc tasks when the usual
procedure breaks down (e.g. rubbish collec-
tion or public transport provision during
strikes). Hence, a crucial question arises: what
is the army for or, as the title suggests, what
should it do? This is not a trivial question,
since on its answer depends the entire face and
essence of tomorrow’s militaries as well as the
issue of what, if anything, differentiates sol-
diers from non-military contractors or mem-
bers of other professions. The feeling is,
nevertheless, that some form of ‘hybridisation’
of the army’s tasks is unavoidable.
The author does an excellent job in care-
fully weighing the pros and cons of the dif-
ferent types of new tasks that an army is
expected to perform with the aim of estab-
lishing ‘what armies can, should, must and
should not do in the homeland’ (p. 147). The
author’s arguments are supported with ample
and well-researched examples and case stud-
ies, making the book valuable not only as an
analysis of the present state of Western mili-
taries but also as an exercise of modern mili-
tary history, albeit one depicting the
unglamorous side that never really gets told.
As such, the book is of significant value to
anybody interested in military affairs, in most
cases, regardless of their level of previous
knowledge.
Ignas Kalpokas
(University of Nottingham)
The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929916649836
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How Global Institutions Rule the World
by Josep M Colomer. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014. 219pp., £66.00 (h/b), ISBN
9781137475077
This is a well-conceived and pleasingly exe-
cuted work which has an obvious and direct util-
ity for students, academics and policymakers
alike. Divided into two sections which link
together well – Part I: Who Rules and Part II:
How They Rule – it explores the broad themes,
institutions and debates of global governance
structures and the related academic literature. It
seeks to link the notions of global governance,
good governance and democracy and, more
importantly, whether they have been success-
fully combined (both historically and also
within contemporary contexts). Josep Colomer’s
long-established passion for his specialisms of
global politics and international institutionalism
are apparent throughout without lessening the
book’s balanced approach towards its large cen-
tral hypotheses. These are (put succinctly and
roughly) that international institutions matter
(whether or not they receive truly global sup-
port), global bodies are increasingly assuming
the majority of the responsibility for decision-
making and that in order to genuinely democra-
tise global institutions, the world must be willing
to keep adopting and designing new institutional
formulas.
While Jim Whitman’s Palgrave Advances
in Global Governance (2009) focused on theo-
retical perspectives and remains relevant,
despite the evolution of more relevant case
studies, Colomer’s book acknowledges the
contemporary nature of the debates at hand and
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