Polarized Patriots: Political Giving by U.S. Military Officers

Abstract

How has political polarization affected political giving by military officers? I argue that public data on military officers’ donations to political causes is likely to reveal partisan and ideological divides among military officer donors. I analyze military officers’ donations from 1979 to 2024 and show that the number of military officers donating to political causes has increased dramatically. The results show that military officer donors are polarized, sorted by their partisan donation tendencies and divided by political ideology. While the data show military officer donors are unlikely to be representative of all military officers, I find that military officer donors lean Republican more than nonmilitary partisan donors and are more conservative than other partisan donors (including donors from many other professional classes). The findings are significant to American civil−military relations, because military officers’ political giving may exacerbate known challenges with political polarization and civil−military relations.

Keywords

civil−military relations political science political giving professionalism partisanship polarization

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abrams

S. J.

Fiorina

M. P.

Pope

J. C.

(2011). Culture war? The myth of a polarized America. Longman.

Ansolabehere

DeFigueiredo

J. M.

Snyder

J. M.

(2003). Why is there so little money in U.S. politics? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(1), 105–130.

Banerjee

Webeck

(2024). Civil-military relations: Through a perilous lens. Armed Forces & Society, 50(1), 3–24.

Barber

M. J.

(2016). Donation motivations: Testing theories of access and ideology. Political Research Quarterly, 69(1), 148–159.

Barber

M. J.

Canes-Wrone

Thrower

(2017). Ideologically sophisticated donors: Which candidates do individual contributors finance? American Journal of Political Science, 61(2), 271–288.

Barber

M. J.

McCarty

(2013). Causes and consequences of polarization. In Mansbridge

Martin

C. J.

(Eds.), Negotiating agreement in politics. APSA.

Bonica

(2014). Mapping the ideological marketplace. American Journal of Political Science, 58(2), 367–386.

Bonica

(2016). Avenues of influence: On the political expenditures of corporations and their directors and executives. Business and Politics, 18(4), 367–394.

Bonica

(2024). Database on ideology, money in politics, and elections (Version 4.0) [Dataset]. https://data.stanford.edu/dime

10.

Bonica

Chilton

A. S.

Sen

(2016). The political ideologies of American Lawyers. Journal of Legal Analysis, 8(2), 277–335.

11.

Bonica

Rosenthal

Rothman

D. J.

(2014). The political polarization of physicians in the United States: An analysis of campaign contributions to federal elections, 1991 through 2012. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(8), 1308–1317.

12.

Burke

Matisek

(2024). Trump(ing) tradition: Old laws, new norms, and the danger to civil-military relations. Armed Forces & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X2412342

13.

Collins

J. J.

Holsti

O. R.

(1999). Civil-military relations: How wide is the gap? International Security, 24(2), 199–207.

14.

Davern

Freese

Bautista

Herd

Morgan

(2024). General social surveys, 1972-2024. NORC. http://gss.norc.org/

15.

Davis

J. A.

(2001). Attitudes and opinions among senior military officers and a U.S. cross-section, 1998-1999. In Soldiers and civilians: The civil-military gap and American National Security (pp. 101–128). MIT Press.

16.

Dempsey

J. K.

(2010). Our army: Soldiers, politics, and American civil-military relations. Princeton University Press.

17.

Department of Defense Manpower Data Center. (2025). Department of defense personnel, workforce reports, and publications. Defense Manpower Data Center. https://dwp.dmdc.osd.mil/dwp/app/dod-data-reports/workforce-reports

18.

DoD Directive 1344.10, Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces. (2008, February 19). United States Department of Defense. https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodd/134410p.pdf

19.

Feaver

P. D.

(2023). Thanks for your service: The causes and consequences of public confidence in the U.S. military. Oxford University Press.

20.

Fenno

(1978). Home style: House members in their districts. Little Brown.

21.

Fiorina

M. P.

Abrams

S. J.

(2008). Political polarization in the American public. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 563–588.

22.

Gordon

S. C.

Hafer

Landa

(2007). Consumption or investment? On motivations for political giving. Journal of Politics, 69(4), 1057–1072.

23.

Hetherington

M. J.

(2009). Putting polarization in perspective. British Journal of Political Science, 39(2), 413–448.

24.

Holsti

O. R.

(1998). A widening gap between the U.S. military and civilian society? Some evidence, 1976-1996. International Security, 23(3), 5–42.

25.

Holsti

O. R.

(2001). Of chasms and convergences: Attitudes and beliefs of civilians and military elites at the start of a new millennium. In Soldiers and civilians: The civil-military gap and American national security (pp. 15–100). MIT Press.

26.

Iyengar

Lielkes

Levendusky

Malhotra

Westwood

S. J.

(2019). The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 22, 129–146.

27.

Janowitz

(1960). The professional soldier: A social and political portrait. Free Press.

28.

Levendusky

(2009). The Partisan sort: How liberals became democrats and conservatives became republicans. University of Chicago Press.

29.

Lythgoe

T. J.

(2023). Are the U.S. military’s nonpartisan norms eroding? Armed Forces and Society, 49(2), 310–329.

30.

Mason

(2018). Uncivil agreement: How politics became our identity. University of Chicago Press.

31.

McCarty

(2019). Polarization: What everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press.

32.

Office of the Actuary, Department of Defense. (2025). Military retirement statistical reports. Office of the Actuary, Department of Defense. https://dwp.dmdc.osd.mil/dwp/app/dod-data-reports/workforce-reports

33.

Political Action Committees. (n.d.). Federal Election Commission. https://www.fec.gov/press/resources-journalists/political-action-committees-pacs/

34.

Robinson

(2023). Dangerous instrument: Political polarization and US civil-military relations. Oxford University Press.

35.

Rosenthal

Poole

K. T.

McCarty

(2008). Polarized America: The dance of ideology and unequal riches. MIT Press.

36.

Schake

Mattis

J. N.

(2016). Warriors and citizens: American views of our military. Hoover Institution Press.

37.

Snyder

N. N.

(2024). Political giving by retired U.S. general and flag officers. Armed Forces and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X241277209

38.

Urben

(2014). Wearing politics on their sleeves? Levels of political activism of active duty army officers. Armed Forces & Society, 40(3), 568–591.

39.

Urben

(2021). Party, politics, and the post-9/11 army. Cambria Press.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

1.10 MB