ABSTRACT
In a democratic system elected politicians are ultimately the controllers of all policy decisions in the state, including those of the military. Their problem is to maintain and demonstrate the reality of that control, bearing in mind the vastness of the state bureaucracy and the necessity of ‘managing the expert problem’. However, the concern of the politician with control sometimes conflicts with the concern of the administrator, and perhaps even more so the soldier in an operational context, with effectiveness. Most policy-implementers, military or civilian, are open to effective policy-guidance; what they object to are rigid procedures designed to realise the desire of politicians to control without knowing how to exercise their power.1 These kinds of questions are highly germane to civil-military relations in the states under review; they are questions of management and effectiveness and how to properly handle the delegation of authority and responsibility. As such, they are not much different from questions asked throughout the public sector.2 However, to understand the concept of civilian control better it is useful to disaggregate the notion of policy:
1 General policy is the policy by which the government of the day is guided. It is the policy of the party in power, to which the people have given their approval through the power of the ballot box. It is an exclusively civilian matter.
