Religious Authorities in the Military and Civilian Control

Yagil Levy

Politics & Society, 2016, vol. 44, issue 2, 305-332

Abstract: This article takes a step toward filling the gap in the scholarly literature by examining the impact of religious intervention in the military on civil-military relations. Using the case of Israel, I argue that although the subordination of the Israeli military to elected civilians has remained intact, and the supreme command has been mostly secular, external religious authorities operate within the formal chain of command and in tandem with the formal authorities, managing the military affairs. This religious influence is apparent in three major domains: (1) the theological influence on military deployment, (2) the exclusion of women from equal participation in military service, and (3) the role expansion of the Military Rabbinate as a quasi-state agency and its reflection in the socialization of secular soldiers and the development of alternative military ethics. Consequently, extra-institutional control of the military is at work.

Keywords: civilian control; extra-institutional control; military ethics; military service; religionization; theology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329216638063 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:44:y:2016:i:2:p:305-332

DOI: 10.1177/0032329216638063

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().