Author Description

What are the effects of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 on U.S. civil-military relations? In a before and after case study comparison, change in civil-military relations as a result of the Goldwater-Nichols legislation will be analyzed in three issue areas, a) resource allocation, b) operations, and c) personnel policy. The results of the analysis show that there were observable improvements in the three measures of civil-military relations with the enactment of the legislation. The enhancement of civil-military relations was mitigated, however, by a number of factors and was highly dependent on the type of issue through which civilians and the military interacted (whether personnel, operations or resource allocation). The research was able to isolate civil-military relations by issue type to determine independent effects of the GNA legislation.