The book interrogates the controversial civil ¿ military relations debate in Zimbabwe. The study argues that, theoretically Civil¿Military Relations (CMR) describes the relationship between civil society as a whole and the military organization or organizations established to protect it. More narrowly, it describes the relationship between the civil authority of a given society and its military authority. Studies of civil-military relations often rest on a normative assumption that civilian control of the military is preferable to military control of the state. The book demonstrates the complexity of relationship between the military institutions and civic societies. The methodology employed was a mixture of internationally recognized scholarly works supplemented by extensive interviews arising out of international benchmarking with similar institutions worldwide. This coherent and accessible book brings the history of civil military relations up to date exploring a variety of perspectives and newly emerging practices in developing countries whose experience in this field is relatively new in both theory and practice.