Theory and research design

This chapter develops a theoretical framework to explain why and how advanced democracies deploy the armed forces for policing functions. It first reviews existing approaches to the study of this issue, highlighting their strengths and limitations. Then, it introduces a rationalist model that conceptualises governing parties as vote-seeking actors choosing between police and military based on responsiveness, ideological coherence, and cost, under varying conditions of certainty and uncertainty. The model identifies minimal sufficient causal configurations and formulates testable hypotheses. Finally, the chapter presents the research design, outlining methods, sources, and operationalisation to assess these mechanisms in the Italian case.