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Purpose – The purpose of the study was to get a deeper understanding of officers’ views of the factors that contribute to army ranger conscripts’ willingness to apply for international military service as well as to look at the officers’ own role in the recruitment process.

Methodology/approach – A grounded theory approach was used. Nine officers from the Swedish Army Ranger Battalion were interviewed.

Findings – Factors that seem to promote the possibility to recruit conscripts to international military service could be understood from five main categories: international military service, education, officers, the Swedish Army Ranger Battalion, and recruitment.

Originality/value of paper – Interviewing key figures in the recruitment process of the Swedish Armed Forces.

The Italian case can be defined by means of the image of the three-sided revolution: from draft to AVF, from national to international oriented military, from all-male to mixed military. These great changes have given rise to a professional military with a lifelong career with frequent deployments abroad and formed by soldiers who are not single males anymore. Because of the rapid process of routinization of abroad deployments and the growing number of military families, the Italian military institution has been caught relatively unprepared, and it has been able to offer a kind of emergency psychological support in case of dramatic events, but less able to give rise to routine forms of family support for those situations where problems are much less tragic but anyway stressing for the private life of families affected by the professional activity of deployed soldiers. In this chapter, results from a qualitative inquiry are presented about military family situation, mainly as far as problems arising because of international deployments are concerned. Research observations have been taken from families where one member (usually the husband) belongs to units where deployment is a continuous problem to live with, but where the socio-cultural area where the unit is settled is different. Due to the country morphological structure, the territorial distribution of units gives rise to two different types of territorial family situation: a strong majority of deployable units are settled in the North of the country, whereas the large majority of soldiers comes from southern regions, that is from 500 or 1,000 kilometers of distance; but some units are on the contrary settled in the southern regions, and in these cases soldiers are really “locals.” This means that in the first type of unit, military families are often similar to migrant families, where both spouses come from far away and are cut off from their social and parental networks, or the young soldier gets married to a “local” girl and the new family can take advantage from the presence of parental and friendships ties of one of the two partners; in the second type, families and soldiers are locals, and they can maintain their basic social integration, their parental and friendship networks. This variety permits to understand to what extent deployment affects family life in situations where primary social support can be a solution, or it is absent and should be provided by the institution itself or by the society at large. Because of this variety, a number of different solutions can be tested to support military families, so that they can choose according to their true needs.

Purpose – For the purpose of forming a nation from the independent regions, the desirability is examined whether first we must seek economic integration of the regions or first military integration of the regions. The comparison of the “all-volunteer army system” and the “draft system” is also attempted.

Design/methodology/approach – Assuming the two regions facing the assault by an intruder, the Walrasian general equilibrium theory in economics is utilized for the comparison. For the construction of armed forces, Lindahl mechanism is introduced. The desirability is evaluated by the comparison of final utilities for the two integration processes achieved from the computation of equilibrium prices and burden shares for military expenses.

Findings – It is found that the all-volunteer army system is more desirable than the draft system in any of the two integrations. Furthermore, “first, the economic integration of the two regions, then the military integration” is more desirable than “first, the military integration of the two regions, then the economic integration.”

Research limitations/implications – Parameters in production and utility functions as well as the population sizes are specified numerically, although the specification is made randomly. The present simulation provides a starting point for further research with general (unspecified) production and utility functions.

Originality/value – This simulation provides a theoretical support for the actual design of the European integration. The originality consists in the derivation of the conclusion from the formulation of a purely theoretical model, which assumes individuals' maximizing behavior.

Some key questions on rationality (responsiveness), consistency, stability and reliability of public opinion have been raised in scientific literature and in professional and lay public in recent years. The authors reply to these questions on the basis of secondary analysis of public opinion results obtained in surveys carried out in Slovenia from 1991 to 2007, examining the following group of variables: perception of threats, membership of Slovenia in NATO, the role of armed forces in contemporary society and their functions and trust into Slovene Army, the way of its manning and operating costs. The authors found that the Slovene public supported crucial projects of the state in the security field (NATO membership, transformation from conscript army into All-Volunteer Force, collaboration in peace operations); however, it did not always follow the opinion of the political elite. Nor did the public follow its own general value orientation while supporting those projects. The data revealed that public opinion about security issues has been relatively rational, consistent and stable in the examined period of time whereas greater changes of attitudes have been most often related to the changed circumstances and availability of new information.

The manning and readiness levels of the reserve forces have been a key issue in the debate of the efficacy of the All‐Volunteer Force (AVF) since the original recommendation for an AVF by the Gates Commission in 1969. General Maxwell Taylor (1981) has identified the AVF's principal failings as:

The chapter examines regional differences in U.S. military participation. Participation in the U.S. all-volunteer military is persistently higher for youth from the South and West than from other regions. While raw numbers of recruits from the South and West have grown, much of the growth reflects broad demographic trends across the United States. In explaining broad differences among states as well as changes over time, the most important factors appear to be the prevalence of veterans in the state and regional differences in civilian pay levels. Remarkably, some characteristics that can disqualify individuals for military service are more pronounced in states that contribute more than their “fair share” of service members. Regional differences in military participation can have important implications for the relationship between armed forces and society. They also have consequences for communities: those that send more young people into the military may experience a disproportionate share of deaths and injuries during wartime; those that send fewer are less likely to enjoy the economic and training benefits associated with service.

Although the Slovenian army is only 17 years old, it is characterised by many changes that most other armies never go through or that would require many decades to implement. Some examples of the stormy history of the Slovenian Army include the transition from the territorial defence as typical reserve to a relatively small but highly effective (post)modern army with compulsory military service and clear defence goals; the NATO approach; constant restructuring, and also the manning dilemma (conscript military service vs. all-volunteer army with career and professional soldiers). If in the first phase the largest problem was a UN weapons embargo, and therefore, as a logical consequence, the technological deficiency had followed, structural and doctrinaire difficulties also appeared very early. Some of them were the consequence of changes in the external security environment, and some were followed by different internal political ambitions and public expectations. However, the classical/conventional tasks of home land defence stepped ever more into the background, and in the foreground stepped the peace operations, increasing crisis/disaster management activities and at the end the absolutely different public requirements for the Slovenian Armed Forces.

Many European nations today are willing to give up conscription system. In some other countries a more or less heated debate on maintaining or abandoning conscription has begun. Those countries that hold conscription have significantly reduced the share of conscripts in their armed forces. In our paper, we will argue and demonstrate that conscription has in fact had its day in most European nations. The data base for this paper is twofold. On one hand, we base ourselves on data from the annually published Military Balance of the London International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). On the other hand, we base ourselves on an expert survey among European countries that was conducted in 2001 and has been updated in the year 2005. One major reason for the move from conscript armies to all-volunteer forces seems to be due to the geopolitical changes which have taken place since the end of the Cold War. Another reason is the increasing number of regional conflicts and the ensuing operations abroad. Thirdly, Europe is undergoing a significant social change with an increasing pluralization of life styles and value cultures. The continuing individualization diminishes the willingness for an unconditional commitment to the state. This leads us to the aspect of burden-sharing equality. Where only a constantly diminishing minority of eligible and able young men is drafted, the issue of who has to serve and who does not becomes significant and can produce massive pressure to abolish conscription.

The chapter presents comparative analysis of data from two representative sociological surveys carried out in the Bulgarian armed forces in June–July 2000 and October–November 2007.

The goal of the chapter is to investigate how possible organizational and cultural barriers operate and influence the successful development and implementation of equal opportunity policy and practices in the military and to suggest options for the improvement of policy decision-making.

In addition, the chapter analyses advantages and possible disadvantages as well as implications of the concept of diversity for the military organization from the perspective of units’ effectiveness, cohesion and teamwork and to suggest recommendations for improvement of the performance of diverse military teams.