The Giueseppe Caforio ERGOMAS Award for Best Book
 

At ever conference ERGOMAS awards a prize for the best book in the domains of armed forces and civil-military relations. The award is awarded in memory of Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Caforio (Brig. Gen., ret.), one of the founding members of ERGOMAS, and a prolific leader of the highly successful Military Profession Working Group. For more information on Giuseppe Caforio's life and contributions please read the memoriam in his honour written by his close friend Prof. Marina Nuciari.

The award is given to a book published in the the two calendar years before the biannual conference (i.e., for the 2019 conference, books published in 2017-2018 may apply). The Award Committee will only consider books in English in the studies of armed forces and civil-military relations, in the areas covered by ERGOMAS' working groups and related areas. The book can be a monograph or an edited volume. Only books by ERGOMAS members will be considered. The Committee will accept self-nominations, or nominations by individual scholars or publishers.  Three hard copies of the nominated books should be sent directly, a copy to each of the members of the award committee:

Dr. Maren Tomforde (Chair)
Sudetenstr. 4,  
23909 Ratzeburg,  
Germany
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Dr. Ashu Pasricha
Department of Gandhian and Peace Studies
Panjab University,  
Chandigarh, 160014
India
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Dr. René Moelker
Gastakker 116
4817 XD Breda
Neterlands
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The 2019 Giuseppe Caforio Award Recepients

First Place

Soldiers, Politicians and Civilians by David Pion-Berlin & Rafael Martinez

Description: Are interactions between soldiers, politicians, and civilians improving? Every nation has to come to grips with achieving a more enduring harmony between government, the armed forces, and society if it aspires to strengthen its democracy. While there is an abundance of studies on civil-military affairs, few examine all three of these actors, let alone establish any standards with which to assess whether progress is being made. This ambitious book devises a novel framework equipped with six dimensions, each of which opens a unique window into civil-military affairs, and which form a more integrated view of the subject. Those dimensions are accompanied by a set of benchmarks and metrics that assess progress and compare one country against another. The framework is applied to case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, with the conviction that insights could be gleaned that may be relevant elsewhere. Ultimately, by unpacking the civil-military relation into its various dimensions, this study has shed light on what it takes to transform what was once a politically-minded military into an organization dedicated to serving a democratic state and society.

Jury report: The jury was very impressed by the work by Pion Berlin and Rafael Martinez, Soldiers, Politicians and Civilians, because they develop a system to measure qualitatively civil military relations and most of all to explain why and how some nations really change in a direction of civil control over armed forces. The social impact and relevance of this work is imminent and cannot be discarded, because this book for example explains why a country like Brazil is in trouble at this very moment. Brazil is regressing into a situation where uniformed violence against citizens is highly plausible. Argentina on the other hand - the economy is a mess - there is hyperinflation - but the armed forces are subjected to effective political control. The risk of new dictators, the risk of militaries tending to military violence against citizens is near to zero. Theoretically and empirically this book describes and explains developments that are relevant for the security situation of the whole continent of South America. Venezuela was not in this analysis, but yes, this is also the situation of Venezuela. It is an outstanding work of scholarly craftsmanship and profound analysis.

Second Place

Identity, Motivation and Memory: The Role of History in the British and German Forcesby Sarah Katharina Kayss

Description: This book explores the connection between British and German officer cadets’ perceptions of the past and their motivations for enlisting in the military forces in the United Kingdom and Germany. Drawing upon qualitative interviews and survey data conducted at officers’ academies in the UK and Germany, the author offers a comparative analysis using differing approaches towards history and memory in Britain and Germany, while considering the roles of individual goals and societal orientations in the decision to enlist. Employing the notion of pragmatic professionalism, which reflects the fact that occupational and institutional reasons for enlisting are not opposite points on a single scale, Professionalism, Memory and Identity examines history-orientated reasons for enlistment by shedding light on officer cadets’ values, beliefs and wider cultural understandings of the past. With attention to differences in motivation as a result of differing national backgrounds and former military training, as well as the extent to which these divergences contribute to the emergence of different types of soldiers in the two countries, this comparative, international study will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics and war studies with interests in the military profession and the role of history in contemporary Britain and Germany.

Jury report: Sarah Katharina Kayss' contribution is highly original and well written. She makes recruitment and retention a good read (whereas most of the literature is not overly exciting). The innovation that Kayss skyrockets in this book is that recruitment is value oriented. The role of values was underestimated in this type of research. Highly original is the use of historically rooted narrative of cadets from the UK and Germany that are relevant to the motivation to enlist. For example the British still are motivated by the idea of Empire, whereas the Germans long for a more objective appreciation of their own past. Of course recruiting of university students versus high school students makes a difference. Of course the differences in duration of the education and career makes a difference. But Kayss demonstrates that the historic narrative (based on the psychology of MacAdams) also makes a difference. This is truly new in the field of recruitment and retention. Some of the results are practical : intrinsic motivations furthers retention. And pragmatic professionalism (David Segals concept) has more explanatory power than the IO model by Moskos.

Second Place (yes, a second second place!)

Civil-Military 'Legal' Relations: Where to from Here? The Civilian Courts and the Military in the United Kingdom, United States and Australiaby Pauline Therese Collins

Description: Civil-military relations establishes the civilian control over the military to protect democratic values. This book argues analysis of the CMR is distorted by the absence of consideration of the judicial arm, with the ‘civil’ seen as referring only to the executive and/or legislature. The civil courts approach to military discipline and the impact that has for CMR within — the United Kingdom, United States and Australia is investigated. The author concludes that by including the courts in the development of CMR theory militarisation of the civilian domain is discouraged. A paradigm shift acknowledging the fundamental role of all three organs of government in liberal democracies, for control of States’ power is essential for genuine civilian oversight.

Jury report: Pauline Therese Collins’ Civil Military ‘legal’ relations,  perhaps is the strange duck in this pond because she points at the courts, the lawyers and the legal side of civil-military relations. It is such a valuable asset to counterweight political science publications by this reminder that trias politica has a legal side to it and without the courts doing their work there is a risk of society getting militarized. For stable civil military relation one needs courts to investigate and judge soldiers when the law is violated. It is a unique and neglected field in civil relations research.

Third Place

Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations by Chiara Ruffa

Description: In Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations, Chiara Ruffa challenges the widely held assumption that military contingents, regardless of their origins, implement mandates in a similar manner. She argues instead that military culture—the set of attitudes, values, and beliefs instilled into an army and transmitted across generations of those in uniform —influences how soldiers behave at the tactical level. When soldiers are abroad, they are usually deployed as units, and when a military unit deploys, its military culture goes with it. By investigating where military culture comes from, Ruffa demonstrates why military units conduct themselves the way they do. Between 2007 and 2014, Ruffa was embedded in French and Italian units deployed under comparable circumstances in two different kinds of peace and stability operations: the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon and the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Based on hundreds of interviews, she finds that while French units prioritized patrolling and the display of high levels of protection and force—such as body armor and weaponry—Italian units placed greater emphasis on delivering humanitarian aid. She concludes that civil-military relations and societal beliefs about the use of force in the units' home country have an impact on the military culture overseas, soldiers' perceptions and behavior, and, ultimately, consequences for their ability to keep the peace.

Chiara Ruffa is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Security, Strategy, and Leadership at the Swedish Defense University in Stockholm.

Jury report: Chiara Ruffa’s book Military Cultures in Peace and Stbility Operation founds her work in her theoretical concepts and triangular, methodological approaches to military cultures.  On the basis of her fieldwork, she reaches a thorough understanding of different sets of military cultures and of the diverse ways these shape soldiers' tactical behaviour in theatre.By trying to explain soldiers' behaviour in peace operations, Chiara studies the role of the military in joint peacekeeping efforts and tries to bridge the divide still existent between security studies and peace research.Her book offers valuable insights on the role of national military cultures in multinational operations and their impact on their effectiveness. Ruffa highlights that variations and specificities across military cultures affect directly the implementation of aspects of the mission mandate.A finding that should be taken into account on the policy level. In her conclusion, Chiara recommends more structured and systematic multinational pre-deployment trainings to further  socialisation into the multidimensional tasks of peacekeeping, the protection of civilians and to "empower open-minded adaptive members" especially in the officer corps.

Previous winners of the Giuseppe Caforio ERGOMAS Award