Impediments to Reform in European Post-Communist Defense Institutions - Addressing the Conceptual Divide

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2016.1220256This article argues two key points. First, that that Western democratic and communist defense and military concepts are antithetical and includes an explanation of why this is the case. Second, evidence is provided to demonstrate that legacy concepts are very much both actively and passively evident in European post-communist defense institutions. Consequently, it is argued that absent systematic efforts to expose and challenges the legitimacy of existing legacy concepts (and their accompanying assumptions and institutional logic), these institutions will continue to exist at best in a state of conceptual incoherence, and at worse as zombie organizations; not dead, but certainly lacking any manifestations of life