Recipient: Suzanne Christine Nielsen, Harvard University

Dissertation: "Preparing for War: The Dynamics of Peacetime Military Reform"

Dissertation Chair: Stephen Peter Rosen, Harvard University

Citation: Suzanne Nielson's dissertation addresses a question that is both perennial and of great contemporary importance: how can a large army achieve fundamental reform during times of peace? She argues that the impetus for reform must come from within the military, not be imposed on it by civilians; that comprehensive change requires support from an organizational entity that has broad authority reaching nearly every corner of the army; and that reforms must be institutionalized in the details of training practices, personnel policies, and leadership development programs.

Nielson develops these themes in a rich, detailed investigation of the transformation of the U.S. Army in the 1970s and early 1980s. She combines extensive use of military documents, oral histories, congressional hearings, specialized publications, and the secondary literature with an impressive understanding of the operation of military organizations. Nielson supplements her examination of the U.S. Army with short case studies on the French army before World War I and the British and German armies between the wars.

Nielson demonstrates the usefulness of applying insights gained from analysis of domestic policymaking to the realm of the military. She also helps us understand how training and personnel practices help shape a complex bureaucracy's sense of mission, an intangible factor of central importance for comprehensive organizational reform. In the process she manages to make a complex story understandable to those who are not experts on military policy.