Soldiers to Citizens: The Link between Military Service and Volunteering

• Date: 01 January 2011
• Author: Rebecca Nesbit,David A. Reingold
• Published date: 01 January 2011
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02307.x

Focus on Seminal

Nonprof‌i t

Management

Issues

Rebecca Nesbit is an assistant professor

of nonprof‌i t management in the Depart-

ment of Political Science at the University

of North Carolina at Charlotte. She received

a doctorate in public affairs from Indiana

University and a master of public adminis-

tration from Brigham Young University. Her

areas of research include civic engagement,

volunteering, nonprof‌i t management, and

arts administration.

E-mail: beckynesbit@uncc.edu

David A. Reingold is a professor of

public policy and executive associate dean

in the School of Public and Environmental

Affairs at Indiana University. Currently, he

is chairman of the Indiana Commission on

Community Service and Volunteerism. From

2002 to 2004, he served as director of

research and policy development at the U.S.

Corporation for National and Community

Service. His primary teaching and research

areas include urban poverty, social policy,

low-income housing policy, civil society, and

government performance. His research has

appeared in the Journal of Policy Analy-

sis and Management, Social Service

Review, Urban Studies, Journal of

Urban Affairs, and Housing Studies,

among other social science journals.

E-mail: reingold@indiana.edu

Soldiers to Citizens 67

Rebecca Nesbit

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

David A. Reingold

Indiana University

Research shows that military service is linked with political

engagement, such as voting.  is connection is strongest for

minorities.  e authors explore the relationship between

military service and volunteering.  ey conclude that

military service helps overcome barriers to volunteering

by socializing people with civic responsibility norms, by

providing social resources and skills that compensate for the

lack of personal resources, and by making veterans aware

of opportunities to volunteer as well as asking them to do

so. Military service is positively related to volunteering

among blacks and Hispanics. Married veterans are more

likely to volunteer than nonveterans. Veterans who served

during wartime are more likely to volunteer than those

who served in peacetime.

In this article, we view the military as a govern-

ment institution with implications for civil society.

 e military, just like any other institution, has

its own set of norms and rules, and new recruits are

socialized to support those norms (Lovell and Stiehm

1989). Research has found a link between military

service and some political behaviors, such as voting or

working on a political campaign (Ellison 1992; Leal

1999; Teigen 2006), which seems to indicate that

military socialization creates more active citizens. It is

possible, then, that military service is related to other

measures of good citizenship behavior beyond politi-

cal participation. Equally important, the military is a

bureaucracy. As a bureaucratic organization, members

of the military are shaped by their experience in this

type of organizational setting. While bureaucracy is

sometimes put in opposition to democracy and demo-

cratic processes (Goodsell 2004, 14), this perception

resides alongside the notion that exposure to military

service and bureaucratic life provides a gateway into

civic service and volunteerism.  is article seeks to

investigate the e ect of military ser vice on volunteer-

ing, another important measure of civic engagement.

The Military as an Institution of Civic

Engagement

Institutions are the “humanly designed constraints,”

or rules, that “structure incentives in human

exchange” and shape human interaction, thereby

regulating and increasing the predictability of human

behavior (North 1990, 3). In an institution, the col-

lection of formal rules and informal constraints and

the process by which they are enforced determine a

person’s potential actions (North 1990), including

those that individuals feel that they should or should

not do.  erefore, institutions structure the incentives

involved in making certain decisions by rewarding

and punishing various actions.

Military organizations possess their own unique set

of governing rules and norms.  e military immedi-

ately immerses new recruits in an extensive training

program that not only teaches recruits new skills,

but also continually exposes them to and surrounds

them with military values and norms. New cadets in

military training institutes immediately undergo a

process in which their civilian status is broken down

and deconstructed and a new identity is “rebuilt”

by constant exposure to military norms, discipline,

values, and authority (Soeters, Winslow, and Weibull

2003). Successful military socialization includes

embracing military values, such as a sense of pride

at being a military member and a sense of loyalty to

the military and its traditions (Lovell and Stiehm

1989).

Not only is the military an institution according

to the de nition just given, but the military is an

especially demanding institution.  e military  ts

Go man’s (1959) de nition of a “total institution,”

meaning that it is a place where a large number of

individuals in a similar situation are separated from

the larger society and subject to formally adminis-

tered rules that govern all aspects of daily life. Others

call the military a “greedy institution” because of the

many heavy demands it makes on members, such as

being on a permanent on-call basis while on duty,

being required to relocate on short notice, and having

many aspects of daily life dictated by the institution

(Soeters, Winslow, and Weibull 2003). After edu-

cational institutions, the military is the government

Soldiers to Citizens:  e Link between Military Service and

Volunteering