Cultural Differences between the Military and Parent Society in Democratic Countries: Volume 4

This book is a report of cross-national research on the civil–military cultural differences in democratic societies, particularly centred on the attitudes of national elites, here considered as being mainly composed of professionals.Our research is limited to the democratic countries: This limit is grounded in the consideration that the cultural dynamics, especially in civil–military relations, of countries with non-democratic regimes are completely different.The initial project, written up and published in the ERGOMAS and RC01 newsletters, was later discussed at several conferences, and subsequently elaborated in a restricted working group.Researchers investigated a sample of cadets at military academies and their generational peers at civilian universities (“future elites”). An expert survey was also employed to sample “present elites”, both civilian and military.The book is therefore a report of the cross-national research on the civil–military cultural gap in democratic societies. It is divided into three parts: the first is devoted to describing the project's theoretical framework and the methodology used in the field research. The second part, deals with the results of the research on the main survey themes. The third part is aimed at illustrating the national specificities to the reader for better understanding of the results of the cross-national comparison. Finally, the last chapter presents a comparison between the responses of the two interviewed elites, present and future, and an attempt to draw a few conclusions.

The aim of this chapter is to present and discuss the theoretical framework that the group has set up for the research presented here. We deal here with the following topics:•a clarification of the general concept of culture adopted by us, and especially of culture of democratic countries•the concept of military culture, along with its subcultures, and the process of change in its dimensions of de-militarisation of societies and re-militarisation of the militaries•a discussion on the possibility of a cross-national research on the subject.Discussion leads us to realise the possibility and the convenience of a research as such. Therefore, we materialise our intent to carry on an empirical research on the civil–military cultural differences in Europe in comparison with results already obtained for the U.S. (but it can be employed in non-European countries too, where living conditions can be assumed to be that of all modern democratic societies).In order to do that, we agreed with several guidelines for our research project, i.e., one basic assumption and three working hypothesis.

The researchers’ first contact for the project on civil–military relations began in 2001. The empirical phase of the research started in autumn of 2003 and ended in 2005. The study was carried out on two levels of empirical investigation: The first was constituted by future elites, represented by civilian students and military cadets. The research among civilian students was limited to three faculties in order making an empirical examination manageable. All in all 3,015 persons from 13 countries have been interviewed. The second level of investigation was constituted by interviewing a sample of current elites through an expert questionnaire.The questionnaire employed for the survey of future elites is reported in Annex 1.

In this article the basic value orientations of future officers and civilian students are compared. It is found that the variance between the 13 countries included in the survey is mostly larger than the one between civilian and military students when it comes to the basic value dimensions such as tradition vs. modernity, left vs. right, cosmopolitan vs. localistic, materialistic vs. post-materialistic and civilian vs. military values. Thus, the military are not consistently in all countries more religious, more right oriented and more materialistic than their civil fellow students, even if there exists a tendency for such a trend.

This chapter deals with the effects that the socialisation process, both primary and professional, has on the cultural attitudes of young people interviewed with regard to national security.The data show the great importance of primary socialisation, especially among cadets, who form a military mindset already before entering the training academies. The process is less accentuated for youths who attend civilian universities.Professional socialisation then operates in both environments, at times in contradictory ways with respect to the aims of the profession for cadets, and with respect to greater awareness of security issues for university students.

Data analysis reveals that the sources of information on military security issues that the young elites mainly rely on are first and foremost television news programmes, followed very closely by newspapers and in third place, but lagging considerably behind, is the Internet. So far the information sources appear to be the same ones and to be equally important for the two groups studied, university students and cadets.However, sizeable gaps have to be registered in the opinions of respondents on the media in general, as, for instance, the assessment of the attitude displayed by the media toward the military, or their interest in defence-related issues, the judgment of the level of information on military issues.Other cultural differences arise dealing with the public opinion theme, as far as the armed forces’ public image is concerned, or on the evaluation of the officers’ professional training.After presenting main data on the theme, this chapter tries to discuss them and to reach some general conclusion.

The threats, the potential enemies, the risks and, consequently, the strategies used in each context to face them have all changed. The comparison by countries between futures civil and military elite shows us the palpable differences that exist among both worlds in these questions. Broadly speaking, a very intense inclination among the university students toward the human security could be detected while the cadets are more inclined toward the hard security. Undoubtedly, such a redefinition and adaptation of military missions to the new demands of a globalised world will eventually take precedence.

The study on democratic control over the armed forces elaborates on perceptions of the respondents in 13 countries on interaction between democratically elected political power and the military. The views of the civilian and military students are similar on many issues that relate to the role of the military in society. There are also some differences in their opinion. Civilian students are more open towards public statements and the public influence of the military than the military students, who seem to be socialised in subordinate position towards the public, and who understood the military professionalism in terms of professional autonomy. This difference is a result of the professional socialisation and correlates with the professional culture of different occupational and professional groups.

In the post Cold War era, military organisations have grappled with the challenge of how to bridge the gap between their mandate, the demands placed upon them by the new security environment and other pressing political concerns. To reflect on this, this chapter examines the responses of officers and civilian students from 13 countries on a range of issues, namely how they perceive the use of armed forces in various missions, the priority assigned to these missions; the importance and mandate of international security organisations; the status of the military within society as their role becomes more international; and the willingness of citizens to serve in the armed forces, given that these missions are often abroad. Judging from the findings, it appears as if there are a number of critical concerns regarding the future role, functioning and character of military organisations, which may be attributed to the emergence of a civil–military gap in many societies.

Since the end of the Cold War, women's integration in the armed forces has been an issue of increasing interest in Europe. The full integration of women into the armed forces is decided on at the divide between voluntary and compulsive service. There is no big civil–military gap in the approval given that military services were mandatory for women. If service is optional, however, there is a clear civil–military gap to be seen in most countries. The differences between the countries, however, must be taken into account as well. There is no standard European attitude concerning the integration of women into the armed forces.

In this research the starting point was that a certain gap between military and civilian culture could exist, because of the inevitable difference between typical military values and new values arisen in contemporary societies, with special reference to Western affluent societies. It seems that this hypothesis belong to the culture-free side, since it rests on the concept of a military culture made of specific values, which are the same in every society. There is anyway a different viewpoint, following the trends of studies developed in the intercultural relations domain, mainly dealing with business internationalisation and cross-cultural management topics, generally known as the culture-bound thesis. In the culture-free assumption the consequence should be a pressure of social change on a supposed unique military; in the culture-bound conception a mutual and systemic adaptation of different institutions within each inclusive society driven by one's own culture could be expected. Findings in this research show that if a relative gap can be observed between military and civilian students, this varies greatly according to different groups of countries. Distances seem to be larger in countries belonging to the post-modern cluster (Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands), and lowering down in modern countries such as Slovenia, Bulgaria and Poland, and even less appreciable in Romania, South Africa and Turkey. This could give some support to the culture-free thesis, according to which military culture is specific and find more convergences with so-called traditional societies than with modern or post-modern cultures. But results are not as sharp as needed, and the culture-bound thesis cannot anyway be rejected.

There is no doubt that democracy explicitly supposes unlimited civilian supremacy over the military. Therefore, the process of building democratic civil–military relations (CMR) and establishment of democratic control over the military is the key element of the social transition in Bulgaria and the transformation of the Bulgarian Armed Forces (BAF) from “guards of the power” into an “instrument of foreign policy”. The essence of this process is in establishing democratic control over the military plus building up a mutual understanding and confidence as well as redefining the military professionalism.

Good working relationship between civilians and military has been one of the key priorities of French Politicians in the last decade. President Jacques Chirac has himself in a political speech in 1996 mentioned a professionalisation of the military corpus which has raised concerns of the future of French armed forces and led to the transformation of the relationship between the military and non-military sector. A good example of this cultural transformation could be noted in the creation of the so-called JAPD (Journée d’Appel à la Préparation de Défense) which is a one day event during which the French young population is given the opportunity to have an insight into the military environment.

We surveyed 270 young officers studying at the Bundeswehr University in Munich and 400 civilian students from Potsdam University. Both groups of future elites were from the social sciences, law, economics or computer sciences departments. The questionnaires were distributed to respondents between January and May 2004. All respondents were volunteers. Return rates were 99% for the military sample with 268 questionnaires returned and 25% for the civilian sample with 100 questionnaires returned so that a total of 368 questionnaires were processed.

The state of the relations between the armed forces and society in Italy displays some general features. The first is the presence of a very broad-based pacifism that has two different origins which, although quite different from each other and in some ways opposing, often end up by uniting or allying. These two traditions are a Marxist–anarchic, or more generically leftist, one, and a Catholic one that is still very strong in our country. Since the end of the Second World War, the extent of this pacifism, often with a good dose of antimilitarism, has always made relations between the country and its armed forces difficult.

Civil–military clashes that result from tensions or even a ‘gap’ between the military organisation and civil society are rather seldom. However, from time to time the headlines of the newspapers report of ‘scandals’, ‘abuses’ or ‘wrongs’ that result from civil–military tensions. Sometimes those wrongs came out in the open after some delay. This happened in respect to a coup-attempt by General Kruls shortly after World War II (Hoogenboezem, 2004). Evaluation of and reappraisal of the war against Indonesian freedom fighters in 1946–1947, euphemistically called ‘police actions’, led to large-scale public discussions 20 years later. In the 1970s, the Dutch citizens acknowledged that these police actions actually were deeds of war and the legitimacy of this war was intensely discussed as were the war crimes committed during the anti-guerrilla operations (Doorn & Hendrix, 1970). In the 1980s, the soldiers’ union published a black book on hazing practises in the armed forces that made it into the headlines. It led to research (Stoppelenburg, 1990) and attempts to stop these practices that often stemmed from the conscripts themselves. Union work and societal forces in favour of democratisation considerably contributed to civilianisation of the armed forces. The one-liner ‘as military as necessary, as civilian as possible’ became factual accepted policy. In the early 1990s, the suspension of conscription, the most important decision of defence restructuring, barely raised societal discussion (Joana et al., 2005; Moelker, Olsthoorn, Bos-Bakx, & Soeters, 2005), but the mishap in Srebrenica in 1995 certainly did! Peacekeeping gradually was seen and socially accepted as core business and when it became evident that keeping the peace in Bosnia was not without risks and when genocidal events befell the refugees in Srebrenica, the civil–military gap was clearly revealed and became the main issue of public debate. It led to discussion on the right of freedom of speech for civil servants when armed forces functionaries overtly expressed themselves in the newspapers (Kreemers, 2002). But the humanitarian debacle also led to a parliamentary inquiry (Parlementaire Enquête commissie, 2003) that, in 2003, caused government to fall. Parliamentary decision-making procedures regarding peacekeeping missions have been improved since. Article 100 of the Constitution states that parliament must be informed on peacekeeping operations unless there are very serious considerations not to do so. Government informs parliament by use of the ‘toetsingskader’ (Moelker, 2004). This is a list of criteria that is used to provide a checklist for informing parliament and to improve the quality of the decision-making. The ‘toetsingskader’ acknowledges that decision-making is an intertwined and convergent process that improves quality by inputs from civilian stakeholders and civilian and military experts. It enables a priori parliamentary control. A list for use by parliamentarians in other countries is given by Born (2003, p. 125).

The reform of civil–military relations and the establishment of a democratic control of Armed Forces were important concerns for the Romanian transition, after 1989. The main reasons were related with a misperception that the military were supporters of Ceausescu's dictatorship, their involvement in the overthrow of Ceausescu's regime, in 1989, when they could have established a military control of society.

The issue of civil–military relations in a democratic country officially appeared as a practical problem at the Round Table Accords at the beginning of 1989. From the press information coming at that time, it resulted that the solidarity-favoring independence side (contemporary opposition) demanded the right of influence upon the country defense policy and military supervision. This attitude expressed the feelings of the Polish public (including a significant part of the Polish People's Army professional staff) who negatively assessed the principle of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) leading role over the armed forces.

Slovenian society was historically very ambivalent towards the military. In former Yugoslavia (1945–1991) many people understood the military as the socialising agent, the organisation that would help their sons to grow up, and as provider of social assistance in cases of natural catastrophes. The role of defence of the homeland was perceived as legitimate task of the military, but the expectation of foreign military threat was gradually decreasing, especially in 1980s. The prioritisation of national security function of the military has been changed into expectations of more civilianised and liberal armed forces. The Yugoslav policy of active participation in non-alignment movement helped people to believe that they live in a neutral country without foreign enemies. The perception of low military threat in public and on the other side very tough and enemies-searching former Yugoslav military elites caused tensions between Slovenian civil society and Yugoslav military elites. The associations of civil society asked for recognition of conscientious objection, which was not permitted in former Yugoslav military until mid-eighties. Even then, the status of conscientious objectors was given to religious believers only, and they had to serve the military duty within the military, without arms. The citizens’ movements asked for use of mother tongue for conscripts in the army, while the military pushed forward one of the Yugoslav official languages, the Serbian one. In 1991, Slovenian decision to gain independence, caused an armed conflict with former Yugoslav army in June–July 1991, and in 1992, Slovenia was a internationally recognised sovereign state.

For almost three decades prior to the end of Cold War, South Africa's defence policy was focused on combating a “so-called” total onslaught on the country. This found the former South African Defence Force (SADF) deployed extensively in neighbouring states to counter an enemy invasion and internally, in support of the police to suppress the rising tide of black resistance against the state's Apartheid policies. With the collapse of communism and the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party in 1990, the country would witness a fundamental reform of its armed forces, their role and purpose, civil control of the armed forces and in civil–military relations (Nathan, 1994).

Civil–military relations in contemporary Spain can be traced back to the Civil War period. After three years of bloody fratricide war the victory of the insurgent forces saw the Spanish Republic turned into an authoritarian regime (totalitarian at the beginning) with General Franco at its head. Franco's dictatorship was not a military dictatorship, but rather the dictatorship of a military officer who developed a three-pillar power base upon which he felt secure and whose three sides – the armed forces, the Church and the single fascist party FET-JONS – offered him complete control over society. During the almost 40 years that the authoritarian regime lasted, millions of Spanish men spent part of their lives as conscripts to military service under the orders of predominantly fascist officers and subject to the rule of an oppressive political power. It is not surprising, therefore, that in Spain the armed forces are regarded as one of the pillars of an authoritarian regime rather than, as is the case in other European countries, as those brave troops who defended democracy against fascism during the Second World War. Civil–military relations in Spain are therefore difficult, and to this day they bear the marks of dictatorship – this despite the fact that since the first governments of the democratic period attempts have been made to improve them.

Sweden is militarily non-allied and has for centuries relied on its own ability to defend itself. Even “neutrality” has traditionally been associated with Sweden, but with increased international involvement this concept has been eroded more and more. Sweden has about nine million inhabitants, is geographically extensive with a length of about 1,500 kilometres from north to south and is, especially in the northern regions, often sparsely populated. Altogether these conditions have had an influence on the dimensioning and structuring of the armed forces. For example, during the 1950s Sweden had the fourth largest air force in the Western world and as late as at the end of the Cold War Sweden, at least on paper, maintained an impressive number of armed forces (850,000 after mobilisation). However the equipment and training of these forces left much to be desired (Åselius, 2005).

Switzerland is characterized by the smallness of its territory (41,000km²) as well as by its considerable ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity. This combination of small size and diversity has had a strong influence on Swiss politics and the Swiss militia army. There has always been a pressure to take into consideration many different interests in political decision making. It is not primarily theoretical considerations that have been decisive for the army format (model) and the civil–military relations but rather the political and historical conditions of the founding of the Swiss Federation. These circumstances are the principles of federalism on the one hand and the century-old tradition of the citizen militia in connection with a deeply rooted distrust of military professionalism on the other. In addition, the neutrality of Switzerland plays an important role as well.

It is a very challenging attempt to illuminate the structures and processes of the difference between civil and military attitudes in Turkey. The Turkish case is unique in many aspects because while Turkey is a Muslim country, which was founded on the historical tradition of Ottoman Empire, it has been also a secular country with a modern parliamentary system. On the one hand, Turkey had struggled to settle pluralism with the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Also, the military as an actor has always had a significant and active role in shaping the political culture in Turkey (Cizre, 1997). This study aims to understand the level of current gap between the civil–military cultures in Turkey. The main source of data for this study has been the data of European Research Group on Military and Society (ERGOMAS) project called “Cultural Dimensions of Civil–Military Relations in Democratic Societies” which was conducted on both the future elites consisting of civil and military college/university students and interviews from current elites. Turkish part of the data was conducted by the present team using questions from the ERGOMAS Project.

The expert survey, carried out in the manner described in Part I of this volume (in Chapter 2), enables us to get a look, through the opinions of a set of top leaders and opinion makers, at the perception of the cultural gap between society and armed forces felt by current elites, as well as to gain insights into the trends over time.

Bahattin Akşit, BA (1968), METU; MA (1971) and PhD (1975) University of Chicago. Dr. Akşit, Professor in the Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University, conducts research in the following areas: Psycho-social aspects of disaster management; Community participation and volunteer associations; Rural structural transformations, Social change and cleavage in towns and cities; Sociology of religion and secularism; Sociology of Middle East and Central Asia; Army and conflict resolution. Recent publications are: (1) Karanci, N., Akşit, B. and Dirik, G. (2005). Impact of a community disaster awareness training program in Turkey, Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 33(3); (2) Akşit, B., Karanci, N. and Gunduz-Hosgör, A. (2001), Turkey, working street children in three metropolitan cities, International Labour Organization; (3) Akşit, B. (1993). Studies in rural transformation in Turkey. In: P. Stirling (Ed.), Culture and the economy: Changes in Turkish villages. Cambridgeshire: The Eothen Press; (4) Akşit, B. (1991). Islamic education in Turkey: Medrese reform in late Ottoman times and Imam-hatip schools. In: R. Tapper (Ed.), Islam in modern Turkey: Religion politics and literature in a secular state. London: I B Tauris and University of London.