Is there a Cultural Gap Between the Military and the Parent Society? An Analysis of Switzerland

Abstract

This paper serves to present the Swiss data in the framework of the international project “Civil–Military Gap” of ERGOMAS Working Group “Military Profession”. Its theoretical basis has been developed in a common working paper (Jelusic, Caforio, Haltiner, Moelker, & Szvircsev Tresch, 2003) and will be presented in a more detailed way in a forthcoming common cross-national analysis. The main research hypothesis and its implied research questions refer to the existence of a growing cultural gap between the military and its parent democratic society: Is there such a gap between the armed forces, mainly its professional bodies and democratic society? If yes, what is the nature of that gap? According to the planning of the research project, the following research steps are carried on in the participating countries: (1) investigate the political culture of future (civilian and military) elites by simultaneously surveying cadets at military academies and students at civilian universities; (2) carry out semi-structured interviews with present elites (an expert survey) in order to assess changes in civil–military relations over time; and (3) elaborate and compare results at cross-national level and compare and contrast them with data from the American (Feaver, Kohn, & Cohn, 2001) research. This paper first outlines some peculiarities of the Swiss military system, considering them as somewhat important for the question of the nature of a possible civil–military gap. It then presents the methodological procedure and the main findings of Switzerland.

Citation

Szvircsev Tresch, T., Allenspach, D., Born, M. and Haltiner, K.W. (2005), "Is there a Cultural Gap Between the Military and the Parent Society? An Analysis of Switzerland", Caforio, G. and Kümmel, G. (Ed.) Military Missions and their Implications Reconsidered: The Aftermath of September 11th (Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development, Vol. 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 265-295. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1572-8323(05)02015-1