Military Professionalism - United States Air Force Academy

state policy—and offers a method for explaining it. To generate a more penetrating
understanding of Russian particularities while expanding the theoretical reach, the article
combines the civil-military relations literature with that of the institutionalist approach,
and more specifically, the concepts of path dependence and institutional decay. Given
the many examples of successful democratization experiences in Southern Europe, Latin
America, and East-Central Europe in the recent past, it is all too often forgotten that
democratization is not necessarily a one-way street that inevitably leads to fair
governance. Neither is it an irreversible process. Since the 1993 conflict between the
president and the legislature, the Russian polity has been on a steady path toward
increasingly authoritarian rule. The deficiencies of civil–military relations accurately
reflect the breakdown of Russia’s democratization experiment.
Thailand
Thompson, Les. “New Constitution Needs a Clause to Keep Those in Uniform from
Political Power.” Bangkok, Thailand: The Nation (Jan. 24, 2007).
The members of the Constitution Drafting Committee should prohibit anyone who has
served in a uniformed rank above sergeant from filling an elected or appointed
government position until he or she has been out of that service for more than 15 years.
This will help to demilitarize Thailand’s political processes.
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