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Replication Data for: Military Culture and Institutional Trust: Evidence from Conscription Reforms in Europe

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Military Culture and Institutional Trust: Evidence from Conscription Reforms in Europe
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WI7WN0
 
Creator Bove, Vincenzo
Di Leo, Riccardo
Giani, Marco
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Does military conscription reduce the distance between the ordinary citizen and the state? Decades after its abolition, numerous European policymakers from across the political spectrum advocate the reintroduction of conscription to foster civic virtues, despite a lack of empirical evidence in this respect. Leveraging quasi-random variation in conscription reforms across 15 European countries, we find that cohorts of men drafted just before its abolition display significantly and substantially lower institutional trust than cohorts of men who were just exempted. At the same time, ending conscription had no effect on institutional trust among women from comparable cohorts. Results are neither driven by more favourable attitudes towards the government, nor by educational choices. Instead, this civil-military gap unfolds through the formation of a homogeneous community with uniform values. We argue that reintroducing a compulsory military service may not produce the effects anticipated by its advocates.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Military conscription
Institutional trust
Civil-military gap
 
Contributor Di Leo, Riccardo
 
Source European Social Survey European Research Infrastructure (ESS ERIC). (2022). Sikt - Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research. https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/



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