Military Service, Combat Experience, and Civic Participation

• Author: Sven E. Wilson,William Ruger
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X20934885
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Military Service, Combat

Experience, and

Civic Participation

Sven E. Wilson

1

and William Ruger

2

Abstract

Military service is a highly social—and potentially socializing—experience. However,

the long-term social effect of military service is a little-studied topic, and some have

dismissed any direct impact of service on civic participation. Using data from a large,

national survey, our estimates show, in contrast, that the likelihood and intensity of

group participation is higher among veterans than other men and that combat vet-

erans have the highest level of participation. Mettler argued that education funded

through the GI Bill gave veterans both resources (“civic capacity”) and a desire to

reciprocateto society (“civic predisposition”)for the generous benefits they received,

but she did not allowfor the possibility that serviceitself could also increase both civic

capacity and predisposition. Furthermore, our estimates confirm that education is

strongly associated with higher civic participation and that the association between

military service and participation is largely independent of education.

Keywords

civil–military relations, veterans, political science, civic participation, social capital

The story of the returned warrior is an old one, told repeatedly from the time of

Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey to modern films like The Best Years of Our Lives,

1

Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

2

Charles Koch Institute, Arlington, VA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sven E. Wilson, Brigham Young University, 722 KMBL, Provo, UT 84602, USA.

Email: sven_wilson@byu.edu

Armed Forces & Society

2021, Vol. 47(3) 551-585

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20934885

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The Deerhunter, and American Sniper. The ubiquity of these tales across time and

place suggests that people are captivated by the issue of war’s impact on the soldiers

who fight them and the communities to which they return.

1

This is no less true of

scholars who have examined in great quantity and depth everything from the effects

of combat experience on violence, domestic abuse, and criminal behavior (recent

examples include Anderson & Rees, 2015; Cesur & Sabia, 2016; Gartner &

Kennedy, 2018; MacManus et al., 2015; Teachman & Tedrow, 2016) to the physical

and mental health effects of wa rtime service (recent examples incl ude Griffith,

2019; Godfrey et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2019; Nassif et al., 2019) to how combat

might impact the political attitudes and behavior of veterans (Blattman, 2009; Gross-

man et al., 2015; Horowitz & Stam, 2014; Teigen, 2006). Given the demanding

tempo of military operations since 9/11—with the United States alone having

deployed roughly 3 million troops over the last 20 years (Wenger et al., 2018)—it

is particularly important to understand how war impacts veterans and how they, in

turn, affect our society.

This article examines one important issue in this area: whether military service

and combat experience significantly affect the level of civic engagement of our

returning soldiers. We are looking to see whether veterans, especially those with

combat experience, are more or less active in their communities. Following Robert

Putnam’s seminal work on civic engagement, the social capital literature exploded

and is quite broad, but scholars have still given little attention to the specific role

military service may play with respect to social capital accumulation.

2

We aim to

help fill that void by looking at a particularly important aspect of social capital: civic

participation. We find that those who perform military service are more likely than

their fellow citizens to be civically engaged. Indeed, they participate in the kinds of

intermediary institutions that de Tocqueville (1835/1840) celebrated at significantly

higher rates than others. And even more interesting, those who faced combat are

even more civically engaged than other returned soldiers. In short, warriors are not

among those who “bowl alone” in contemporary America.

Conceptual Background

The aim of this article is to ex amine the relationship between mi litary service,

combat experience, and civic engagement. In the process, we hope to explicitly

contribute to the large literature on social capital, given that civic participation is

both a means to the formation of social capital and a critical indicator of its exis-

tence.

3

In particular, by bringing in neglected military variables, we seek to round

out our collective understanding of the determinants of social capital. Of course,

civic engagement is important to individuals and societies for many reasons other

than social capital formation, further justifying its value as a subject of inquiry.

These include civic participation’s relation to individual- and country-level quality

of life and happiness (Wallace & Pichler, 2009, p. 271), economic and political

outcomes (Fukuyama, 2000; Gilman, 2017), social welfare provision (Beito, 2000),

552 Armed Forces & Society 47(3)

public opinion and civic vitality (Bryce, 1888, p. 45), and other key socioeconomic

and political variables. We also aim to better our knowledge of the specific effects of

military service and combat experience on individual soldiers, their families, and the

broader communities in which they live.

Unfortunately, the link between military service and civicengagement of any kind

has been largely ignored by social scientists. Even when it is touched on, military

service is relegatedto the sidelines. For example,Putnam (2000, p. 485, FN41) rules it

out as an influence on social capital in a mere footnote, briefly mentioning that his

analysis using the General Social Survey (GSS) shows no impact of military service

for World War II (WWII) veterans. This oversight is surprising given that war in

general has had huge effects on the lives of soldiers and civilians as well as being

understood as a crucible for so many aspects of political life,political institutions, and

civil society (see, among many others, Higgs, 1987; Karsten, 1978; Kier & Krebs,

2010; Kryder, 2000; Modell & Haggerty, 1991; Obinger et al., 2018; Porter, 1994;

Ralston & Krebs,2018; Ruger et al., 2002;Skocpol, 1992; Sparrow, 2011;Tilly, 1975,

1990; Wimmer, 2014). Nonetheless, a few scholars have tried to fill this lacuna

regardingthe specific roles of militaryservice and combat experience;the next section

of this article describes and examines this literature.

Military Service and Civic Participation

Surprisingly, given its central role in the history of states and societies, the military

has been relatively ignored in the study of civic participation. Of course, de Tocque-

ville is a notable exception as he worried about the effects of war on civil society.

However, according to Theda Skocpol, this interest was not carried forward in the

early classics on civic participation. For example, Skocpol et al. (2002, pp. 138–139)

note that in Almond and Verba’s classic study The Civic Culture, “the effects of war

on civic engagement were not explored.”

This paucity of emphasis on the possible link between the military and civic

participation has carried over into the current period of study on socia l capital.

Skocpol et al. (2002, p. 139) argue that this is because most scholars of civil society

“rely on an institutional displacement understanding of the relationship between

state activity and voluntarism. What has been done is either centered on the political

participation studies referenced above (and below) or on political opinions/attitudes

(for examples of the latter, see Feaver & Gelpi, 2004; Feaver & Kohn, 2001;

Janowitz & Wesbrook, 1983; Jennings & Markus, 1977; Kl inger & Chatagnier,

2013; Schreiber, 1979). However, some studies have looked at the broader link. Yet

most of these focus on the connection between the war in general—in particular, the

energy, spirit, and needs sparked by war and the institutions developed to handle

them—and civic participation rather than the relationship between wartime service

itself and future civic engagement (see Kage, 2010). Indeed, what Modell and

Haggerty (1991, pp. 220–221) noted nearly three decades ago still largely holds,

“little has been done to assess what kind of difference it makes to the individual in

Wilson and Ruger 553