Development of the Zimbabwe National Defense College, 2004-2012

This book interrogates the often controversial civil-military relations debate in Zimbabwe. The study argues that, theoretically, Civil-Military Relations (CMR) describes the relationship between civil society as a whole and the military organization or organizations established to protect it. More narrowly, it describes the relationship between the civil authority of a given society and its military institutions. Studies of civil-military relations often rest on a normative assumption that civilian control of the military is preferable to military control of the state. This text demonstrates the complexity of relationship between military institutions and civic societies particularly in developing countries. The methodology employed here is a mixture of internationally recognised scholarly works supplemented by extensive interviews arising from international benchmarking with similar institutions worldwide. This coherent and accessible book brings the history of civil military relations up to date, exploring a variety of perspectives and newly emerging practices in developing countries whose experience in this field is relatively new in both theory and practice.