Domestic Military Deployments in Response to COVID-19

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X211072890
• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Date: 01 April 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X211072890

Armed Forces & Society

2023, Vol. 49(2) 350 –371

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X211072890

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Article

1134644AFSXXX10.1177/0095327X211072890Armed Forces & SocietyErickson et al.

research-article2022

Domestic Military

Deployments in Response to

COVID-19

Peter Erickson

1

, Marko Kljaji´

c

1

, and Nadav Shelef

1



Abstract

Militaries are commonly deployed in response to domestic disasters. However, our

understanding of this phenomenon remains incomplete, partly because the particulars

of disasters make it hard to generalize about deployments used in response. This article

leverages the COVID-19 pandemic’s global reach to systematically evaluate common

hypotheses about when and how militaries are used to respond to domestic disasters.

It presents original global data about domestic military deployments in pandemic re-

sponse and uses it to assess common theoretical expectations about what shapes

whether and how militaries are used in such contexts.The results suggest that decisions

about whether to deploy militaries stem from the securitization of domestic disaster

relief rather than being responses to specif‌ic disaster-related features, state capacity

shortcomings,or other social or political factors,even as some of these elements shaped

how militaries wereused. The article concludes by outliningsome hypotheses for future

research about the impact of this securitization on civil–military relations.

Keywords

Civil–military relations, securitization, political science, domestic deployment,

COVID-19

In the early spring of 2020, as the number of COVID-19 cases skyrocketed, the Israeli

Defense Forces’Chief of the General Staff called for the military to take over the

pandemic response from the Ministry of Health (Limor, 2020). While the overtness of

1

Political Science Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Nadav Shelef, Political Science Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 110 North Hall, 1050 Bascom

Mall, Madison WI, 53706, USA.

Email: shelef@wisc.edu

Erickson et al. 351

the Israeli military’s initiative was perhaps unusual, Israel’s reliance on the military to

respond to the pandemic was not unique. As we show below, nearly every state used its

armed forces to respond to the pandemic. In part, this is unsurprising since disaster

response is part of the mission portfolio of many contemporary militaries (Bruneau &

Matei, 2013;Ratchev & Tagarev,2018). However, our understanding of when and how

militaries are used in such contexts remains incomplete, partly because the variation in

the particularities of disasters makes systematic, cross-national, investigations of

hypotheses about what drives domestic deployments in disaster response diff‌icult to

implement.

This article contributes to f‌illing that gap by leveraging the COVID-19 pandemic’s

global reach to systematically evaluate common hypotheses about when and how

militaries are used to respond to domestic disasters in a setting that is globally

comparable. A signif‌icant theoretical and case-based scholarship addressing the use of

militaries in disaster relief (e.g., Croissant et al., 2010;Egnell, 2008;Gibson-Fall, 2021;

Head & Mann, 2009;Kalkman, 2021;Kapucu, 2011;Kohn, 2003;Laksmana, 2010;

Levinson, 2008;Schrader, 1993;Tkacz, 2006;Maleˇ

siˇ

c, 2015;Pion-Berlin, 2016;

Pramanik, 2018;Ratchev & Tagarev, 2018;Tagarev & Ratchev, 2018) and research on

the securitization of healthcare and disaster response more generally (e.g., Bernard,

2013;Curley & Herington, 2011;Chigudu, 2016;Davies, 2008;Enemark, 2009;

Kamradt-Scott & McInnes, 2012;Kelle, 2007;McInnes & Lee, 2006;McInnes &

Rushton, 2013;Roemer-Mahler & Elbe, 2016;Oshewolo & Nwozor, 2020;Watterson

& Kamradt-Scott, 2016) has generated important hypotheses about what drives

domestic deployments in disaster response.

1

These hypotheses tend to highlight the

role of disaster-related, state (including military) capacity, and social and political

factors in driving the use of militaries in disaster response. By evaluating the purchase

of these hypotheses cross-nationally, we answer the continuing calls to complement

case studies of civil military relations with systematic, cross-national, investigations

(e.g., Bruneau & Matei, 2013;Croissant & Kuehn, 2020;Eschenauer-Engler &

Kamerling, 2019).

The use of militaries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn signif‌icant

attention. The resulting case studies (e.g., Elran et al., 2020;Pasquier et al., 2021) and

small-n comparative (usually regional) analyses (e.g., Gad et al., 2021;Opillard et al.,

2020;Passos & Ac´

acio, 2021) highlight the variety of roles militaries played, including

providing healthcare, logistical support, and law and order, among other missions.

Others (e.g., Gibson-Fall, 2021) have identif‌ied different degrees of military in-

volvement in the response based on several noteworthy cases. Still other analyses have

focused on the military side of the equation, unpacking why militaries themselves

might want to participate in the pandemic response (e.g., Kalkman, 2021).

This article complements this existing work in three related ways. First, going

beyond individual case studies or regional comparisons, it presents the f‌irst global data

and evaluation of the correlates of military responses to the pandemic. This allows us to

account for potential regional differences and to draw generalizable conclusions

without concern for selection bias. Doing so shows that, while some factors thought to

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