Lasswell's Garrison State Reconsidered: Exploring A Paradigm Shift in U.S. Civil-Military Relations Research

摘要

The plausibility of performing trend analyses of the political influence of the United States military on value allocations of income, safety, and deference was explored. This approach was taken to assess the viability of Harold D. Lasswell's garrison state construct in which he hypothesized that the trend of the world was that it was evolving toward a time when virtually all aspects of governance would come under military control (most notably in the value areas previously listed), even in democracies. The study differs from previous civil-military research in that it attempts to quantify and graphically display the trends in value allocations that may indicate such an evolution in the United States. By adapting currently available data to this study, the extant trends in income (annual percentage pay increases), safety (socialization of the threat of war as indicated by trends in death rates), and deference (indicated by institutional confidence) were developed. The findings provide a quantitative indication supportive of Lasswell's hypothesis; although the significance of the results is largely subjective. Moreover, the study demonstrates that Lasswell's call for trend analysis, to determine a state s movement on the continuum from a business state to a garrison state existence, is a valid approach in the study of civil-military relations. Future studies should seek to refine existing data or develop new databases to allow more rigorous statistical analyses.