Introduction: New perspectives on civil-military relations

Civil-military relations have long been an important topic for political science scholars. In spite of its long tradition, however, the field has been repeatedly criticised as being too detached from the greater domain of political science and being too conservative in its conceptual, theoretical and methodological foundations. In recent years, however, a new generation of civil-military research has emerged which has considerably promoted the development of the field beyond the confines of the classical texts. This symposium comprises four articles by European scholars who share a conviction to furthering the study of civil-military relations and developing closer links between the mother discipline of political science and its more specific subfields of comparative and theoretical military studies.