ABSTRACT
Why compare militaries? A great deal of the seminal social science literature on the military has been focused on nationally specific topics, and the nuances of national strategic cultures are generally held to be important in understanding why states and their militaries vary on questions of defence. However, it is undeniable that a reliance on what Williams (2007: 100) calls ‘insular case studies’ may mean that wider trends are missed. For some, the appeal of comparative research lies in the sense that militaries are changing rapidly: post-Cold War changes in the nature of warfare, the globalisation of security challenges, the increasing multinational nature of missions and a growing homogeneity among advanced militaries mean that comparative work is needed to understand the changes and the implications they might have. Cross-national comparisons can help us to better understand the processes and mechanisms underlying change at the national level and thus identify what is important and what less so. Caforio (2007), for instance, claims that the extent of the recent changes to the functions and roles of the military, particularly in highly developed states, makes cross-national military research increasingly vital. For others, the desire to generate generalisable theories makes hypothesis testing on multiple cases necessary.
