Armed Forces & Society

Military organizations often emphasize the importance of loyalty. It has been suggested that loyalty enhances motivation to take great risks and strive to accomplish a mission. However, research into what influences loyalty among military personnel is scarce. Hence, the aim of this study was to examine how leadership and social identity fusion relate to loyalty, using data from a sample consisting of a Swedish military unit on a United Nation mission (N = 152) in Mali. Hierarchical multiple regression results generally showed that social identity fusion and leadership were positively related to a willingness to show loyalty to the closest workgroup, one’s own unit, and the mission. The findings indicate that leadership and high levels of social identity fusion may influence the willingness to be loyal to organizational goals. The practical implication of this study is increased knowledge about the importance of leadership and social identity in developing relevant loyalties.

Military unit cohesion has been associated with team performance, combat motivation, and positive mental health outcomes. Scholarship of military cohesion has been dominated by the Standard Model of Cohesion and the Task Cohesion Approach. Recent shifts in the character of conflict alongside a range of sociopolitical changes require these models to be reevaluated. This article aims to empirically compare these models using a deductive exploratory approach to assess their utility for present-day military formations. Seven construct variables were operationalized as deductive themes, coded against 26 focus groups with personnel from three military formations. Thematic analysis was supplemented by graph modeling, allowing to visualize interactions of constructs. Findings show that military formations develop cohesion in different ways. Teams low in occupational similarity emphasized leadership and shared experiences, while those with high levels emphasized professional competence. This novel approach provided a powerful tool to analyze, visualize, and model qualitative data about cohesion.

This research compares food insecurity for U.K. veterans and nonveterans using the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 10-item Adult Food Security Survey Module (AFSSM) for a sample of 1,492 participants. We find 1 in 10 veterans are living in a food-insecure household but that veteran status is not related to food insecurity. In addition, income and housing benefits are correlated with food insecurity for veterans and for nonveterans, but disability benefits are correlated with food insecurity among veterans only. Specifically, veterans with disability benefits averaged 1.12 (95% confidence interval, [0.42, 1.82]) more points (indicating more food insecurity) on the AFFSM than veterans without those benefits. These findings raise concerns that low-income disabled veterans with housing needs are a unique population at risk of living in food insecurity. Given the absence of research on food insecurity among U.K. veterans, it is necessity to study this population in greater detail and implement screening protocols where possible.

Parliamentary oversight is a cornerstone of democratic control of the armed forces, but its influence on civil–military relations (CMR) remains underexplored. We argue that parliaments in transitioning democracies face unique structural challenges in developing robust oversight of the military compared to advanced democracies. We developed a typology of three distinctive types of parliamentary oversight and proposed that cooperative oversight potentially offers a solution to structural challenges faced by parliaments in transitioning democracies. In our case study of Indonesia, cooperative oversight promoted harmonious working relations between the Parliament and the military/executive, stabilizing CMR. However, cooperative oversight also stalled civil–military reforms, eroded democratic management of the defense sector, and reinforced an unhealthy dependence on the military to self-regulate and the President’s appointment power of the armed forces’ commander. Over the longer term, we believe that the Indonesian Parliament needs to incorporate a mix of oversight strategies and raise its institutional capacity to strengthen oversight of the defence sector.

The influx of populism in Europe revived the values of illiberal, authoritarian government. This affects the democratic character of Civil–Military Relations (CMR) in the post-communist countries in particular. We analyzed the development of CMR in Czechia (1992–2022) under the influence of populism (2010–2022). Applying the CMR concept of the shared-democratic-values-perspective, our study provides empirical evidence that persistent shortcomings in formal institutional and informal socialization of Czech officers by values of democracy open a dangerous back door for spreading the values of military populism in the Czech Armed Forces. We argue that such development in the last 10 years has resulted into a formation of illiberal alliances between populist leaders and the military elite and poses a risk of the army being misused to politically support the authoritarian populist government.

This article explores the complicated process of post-deployment homecoming in military families in Denmark. Based on qualitative interviews with spouses and children of formerly deployed soldiers, the article analyses some of the main challenges related to homecoming and military-to-family transitions in military families. It illuminates how deployment affects family practices and social relations by especially focusing on gender equality, fatherhood, and masculinity. Based on interviews with spouses and children, the article outlines three masculinity positions available to Danish homecoming veterans: gender equality masculinities, militarized masculinities, and troubled masculinities.

The existing theories of interaction between Congress and the Department of Defense (DOD) focus on elite-level principle-actor problems. However, the Department, as one of the most popular institutions in the United States, also has significant public appeal and maintains an active public affairs arm. This article builds on theories of bureaucratic reputation to argue that the DOD uses its public communications to advocate for its own budget. I leverage computerized text analysis to examine over 40,000 public facing documents published by the DOD since 2005. I find evidence that the DOD changed both the timing and the content of its public-facing communications to strategically argue for its budget. This is true during large budgetary shifts (like the U.S. budget sequester) and during the period of the year that the budget is under debate.

This article investigated the effects and mechanisms of military service on health outcomes of Chinese elderly men aged 60 and older. While numerous studies explored the effect of military service on health in developed countries, we still knew little about the relationship between military service and later health outcomes in developing countries such as China. Using the data of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we found that military service is positively associated with better health outcomes of the elderly, in terms of physical health, cognitive abilities, and self-rated health. In addition, results of mechanism analysis show that, compared with nonveterans, elderly veterans had healthier habits, better education, higher individual and household income, and more favorable social medical security.Moreover, heterogeneity analysis indicates that this effect is more pronounced for older, rural, and spouseless elderly people. This article provided insights into elderly veterans’ health security measures in developing countries.

Military organizations have adapted to the logic and dynamics of social media to transmit their institutional narratives. Instagram is the most popular social network, but one of the most understudied in relation to the Armed Forces. This research note presents a comparative study of the content of the official accounts of the Spanish, French, the United States, Israeli, and Australian armies throughout 2021 (n = 1,922). The specific objectives are to describe and analyze the hashtags, the accounts mentioned, and the main topics of the post. Results show that armies can convey multiple messages in a single post, and reveal that armies make similar use of Instagram, notwithstanding the various differences between Israel and the other armies due to organizational and contextual elements.

This note illustrates some of the new roles that armed forces are taking on in developed countries, highlighting the structure, capabilities, and missions developed by the Spanish Military Emergency Unit (UME). The note describes some of these new roles assumed by UME, such as its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and shows, using official temporal and georeferenced data, the growing use of the military to support civilian authorities in response to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and other emergencies alike. In addition, we also analyze public opinion survey data to argue that this is helping to improve society’s perception of the armed forces even in a country like Spain where, due to its recent history, a significant part of its population is reluctant to the military. In short, the military is taking on more emergency roles as needs arise and these new roles can help to improve its perception by citizens.

This article responds to the analysis about the Spanish Emergency Military Unit in the research note by Pérez et al. in Armed Forces & Society, which emphasizes the efficiency of the Spanish Emergency Military Unit and how it has enhanced the image of the Spanish Armed Forces. We believe that a more critical understanding of the development of this military unit is necessary, as its deployment pitfalls and the literature on civil–military relations were neglected. Consequently, four policy traps are identified: response to civilian emergencies has become a central task of the armed forces rather than an auxiliary role; behind the pragmatism of its employment, there is potential for a worsening of civil–military relations, as highlighted by the scholarly literature; there are serious inefficiencies in its organizational design, related to human and financial resources; and image improvement is an illusion, strongly conditioned by political cleavages, with potential long-term counterproductive results.

This article assesses the role and understanding of war’s most inflexible factor—time—and its associated pressures and advantages in the Russo-Ukrainian War. While there seems to be no consensus on who might prevail (and of course the elements of what constitutes victory itself can vary), the passage of time—frequently understood in military terms as endurance and exhaustion—is a useful framework to assess the direction of the war, relative advantage at various stages, who may ultimately prevail, and under what conditions that may be possible. Although timetables and schedules have played an enormous role in military history, there appears to be no systematic assessment of the role of time in relation to strategy and victory in the Russo-Ukrainian war. This article sets out to fill that gap through a systematic comparison of time’s passing and time pressures facing the combatants.