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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.

Purpose – The aim of this chapter is to explain peculiarities of socialization of conscripts through the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism.

Methodology/approach – The process of socialization of conscripts is considered as a combination of elements of primary and secondary socialization. These elements are defined on the basis of theoretical ideas of Cooley, Mead, Berger, and Luckmann. The potential of this approach is examined by taking the Russian armed forces as a case study.

Findings – Socialization of conscripts is mostly secondary (professional) socialization. But in some countries (with conscription), it includes many elements of primary socialization. In these cases, the army can become a total institution for the conscript inmates.

In the 21st century, disputes between military and civilians are to occur in the arena of security or defense policies. The civil–military relations of Korea might be shifted from the political conflicts between political elites and military leaders to the democratic governances of the military sector.

This chapter examines the existence of civil–military gap in the perceptions or attitudes on the security or defense issues. The samples are classified into six subgroups. The military is classified into “commissioned officers (COs) and non-commissioned officers (NCOs)” and “conscripted soldiers,” and the civilians into four subgroups according to sex and age. There is not much acute or urgent, serious civil–military gap in the analysis. Sometimes the perceptional gap rather resides between the male and the female or between the youth and the elder generation than in between the military and the civilian. But there are some differences in perceptions and attitudes between the military and civilians. These are related to the interests of national security affairs, to the military threat from North Korea, and to the confidence in the defense management. Owing to their different life conditions, the perceptional differences between civilians and military are inevitable to some degree. But to develop better civil–military relations and to enhance the consensus in the national security issues in the 21st century, institutionalizing the democratic governance might be necessary. It is recommended to have more discussions between the military and civilians, to share more information about the security issues, to increase transparency in the defense management, and to have more participation of the civilians in the security sector.

This chapter examines the security political attitudes in Finland, a relatively modern, relatively affluent ‘western type’ EU country, where approximately 80% of the male cohort still undergoes compulsory military training. In this chapter, some of the reasons for this are examined as well as the reasons behind the marked differences in relevant attitudes between Finland and some other EU countries.

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.