Introduction

This book represents the first attempt to deal with the problem of how to conceptualize the civil-military relations of communist systems within a common intellectual framework.

Major Constructs

The opening chapters present three major constructs originally designed for analyzing civil-military relations in the USSR: the interest group approach, the institutional congruence approach, and the participatory model.

Application of Approaches

In subsequent chapters the utility of these approaches is tested against a wide variety of communist systems, including those of Cuba, the USSR, China, Romania, Hungary, the GDR, and Poland.

Insights and Contributions

In probing these issues for the first time, the authors shed considerable light on the transnational differences and similarities among communist systems, and the dynamics of civil-military relations in all communist systems.