PolisInWar

The main objective of PolisInWar is to revisit the conditions of use of military force by the state in the contemporary period, starting with an analysis of the French case. In line with the reflections on the "policy state", we believe that this use is not simply a function of the characteristics or the size of the military institution at the disposal of the state, but also of its capacity to produce public policies and institutional engineering in line with this recourse to military force. From this perspective, we put forward three sets of hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that one of the main challenges faced by Western states in the use of military force in recent years is the question of its financing. Our second hypothesis is that the budgeting of state military operations, i.e. the modalities of their inclusion in or coverage by the state budget, may constitute a privileged site of observation of the problems posed by this financing of the use of military force and the modalities by which it is covered. Our third hypothesis is that this budgeting causes a redefinition of the conditions under which the political authorities can resort to military force, but also of the power relations that can exist between the different actors - political and administrative, civilian and military - who are associated with it. Using a team of political scientists and economists, this research project tests these different hypotheses by comparing the budgeting methods of three types of military operations implemented by the French state since the beginning of the 2000s: “external operations”, “internal missions” and “cyber operations”. Through an approach in terms of the political sociology of public action, it proposes to renew an analysis of France's military interventions that has largely been dominated by works on international relations.