Use of force and civil–military relations in Russia: an automated content analysis
Abstract
Russia's intervention in the Georgian–South Ossetian conflict has highlighted the need to rigorously examine trends in the public debate over the use of force in Russia. Approaching this debate through the prism of civil–military relations, we take advantage of recent methodological advances in automated content analysis and generate a new dataset of 8000 public statements made by Russia's political and military leaders during the Putin period. The data show little evidence that military elites exert a restraining influence on Russian foreign and defence policy. Although more hesitant than their political counterparts to embrace an interventionist foreign policy agenda, Russian military elites are considerably more activist in considering the use of force as an instrument of foreign policy.
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Stewart and Zhukov (2009) show that Russian military elites are more activist in considering the use of force than their political counterparts, in contrast to conventional wisdom.
“Stewart and Zhukov (2009) use similar results to show that Russian military elites are actually more activist in considering the use of force than their political counterparts, in contrast to the conventional wisdom (Gelpi and Feaver 2002).”
From Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts (2013) · cites this paper as Stewart and Zhukov (2009)
Cites
States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China
Skocpol, T. (1979) · Cambridge University Press · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511815805 · Cited by 5,408 · see citing works
How to analyze political attention with minimal assumptions and costs
Quinn, K. M., Monroe, B. L., Colaresi, M., Crespin, M. H., & Radev, D. R. (2010) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00427.x · Cited by 671 · see citing works
Monroe, B. L., Colaresi, M. P., & Quinn, K. M. (2008) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1093/pan/mpn018 · Cited by 542 · see citing works
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Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts
Grimmer, J., & Stewart, B. M. (2013) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1093/pan/mps028 · Cited by 3,297 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Stewart, B. M., & Zhukov, Y. M.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Stewart, Brandon M.
- Venue
- Small Wars & Insurgencies
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2009-06
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 319-343
- ISSN
- 0959-2318 (ISSN-L)
- 1743-9558
- OpenAlex
- W2010455623
- Cited by
- 69
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 4.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Small Wars and Insurgencies (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › International Relations and Foreign Policy
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Military and Defense Studies
- Keywords
- use of force, civil-military relations, Russian foreign policy, defense policy, public statements, Putin era, interventionism, computational text analysis
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