A new comparative study published in Armed Forces & Society examines how citizens in five democracies understand why soldiers and officers joined the military, revealing striking cross‑national differences rooted in national citizenship traditions and military operational tempo. The authors report that their surveys in France, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States show that “beliefs about motivations for military service vary significantly by nation,” with some publics emphasizing patriotism and civic duty and others focusing on paychecks, benefits, or desperation.
The researchers behind the study, entitled “Citizenship Traditions and Cultures of Military Service: Patriotism and Paychecks in Five Democracies,” begin by situating their work in the long arc of democratic military recruitment. They noted that over the past six decades, “many countries — and especially the world’s wealthy countries — gradually abandoned the military draft,” shifting toward volunteer forces recruited on the open labor market. Critics have long feared that the end of conscription would “kill off ‘the mythic tradition of the citizen-soldier,’” weakening civic duty and elevating individualism. The authors argue that Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine revived these debates, especially in Europe, where concerns about recruitment shortfalls had led some states to reintroduce or expand selective conscription.
The study builds on earlier US-focused research showing that Americans often resist viewing military service as ordinary employment. As the authors summarize, prior work found that “a majority of Americans resist thinking of military service as a ‘job’ and of soldiers as ‘employees.’” But the new study extends this inquiry across four additional democracies to determine whether the “citizen‑soldier” ideal persisted elsewhere.
The team fielded nationally representative surveys between 2018 and 2021, asking respondents to choose among four motivations for military service: patriotism, good citizenship, pay and benefits, or the need to escape adverse circumstances. In Israel, where enlisted soldiers are overwhelmingly conscripts, the survey instead asked about officers and omitted the “no other options” category because respondents found it implausible. The authors emphasize that these differences “complicate efforts to compare the data,” but the overall pattern remains clear.
The results show sharp national contrasts. In Germany, “‘pay and benefits’ was by far the most common response … accounting for more than half of respondents (53.6%),” followed by “no other options.” In the United Kingdom, half of respondents (49.7%) also chose “pay and benefits,” nearly double those who selected patriotism. The United States displayed a more even split: “43.1%” chose pay and benefits, while “33.3%” chose patriotism.
France and Israel, however, stand apart. In France, a plurality (32.9%) attributed service to patriotism, with substantial numbers also selecting good citizenship and pay‑and‑benefits. In Israel, “46.4% said that officers signed up primarily out of patriotism,” with another 38% citing pay and benefits. When motivations were grouped into intrinsic versus extrinsic categories, the divide sharpened: “[L]arge majorities of respondents in Germany and Britain attribute extrinsic motivations,” while “significant majorities of respondents in France and Israel credit soldiers … with being chiefly intrinsically motivated.”
The authors then tested three possible explanations for these differences: military size, recruitment format, and operational tempo. None proved sufficient. Military size, for instance, failed to predict public beliefs. They write that “the size of the military cannot explain the cross-national pattern,” since France and the United Kingdom have similarly sized forces but very different public attitudes, and Israel’s exceptionally large reserve force did not produce extrinsic narratives.
Likewise, having a family member in the military did not consistently shape beliefs. The authors report that “respondent-level data … do not support” the idea that military families idealize or demystify service motivations. In France and the United Kingdom, household military service “was not associated with any particular account,” and even segmenting French respondents by whether relatives served before or after the end of conscription revealed “no significant differences.”
Finding the standard explanations inadequate, the authors advance a new framework centered on national citizenship traditions and military operational tempo. They argue that “the more a political culture embraces republican citizenship ideals, the more citizens see soldiers as intrinsically motivated.” But in republican states with low operational tempo, citizens might temper this idealism. Conversely, in liberal citizenship cultures, people tend to view soldiers as extrinsically motivated — unless high operational tempo compels them to valorize service and “venerate soldiers’ patriotism and sacrifice.”
This combined framework, they contend, best explains why France and Israel lean intrinsic, why the United States is evenly split, and why the United Kingdom and Germany lean extrinsic. The authors conclude that these findings have broad implications for democratic civil‑military relations, noting that assumptions about soldier motivations “affect public support for military operations,” shape attitudes toward veterans’ benefits, and influence beliefs about “the appropriate roles of military officers and civilians in policymaking.”
The study ultimately suggests that national cultures of citizenship remain deeply rooted despite surface-level convergence among democracies. As the authors write, their findings “provide further evidence… that national citizenship traditions are enduring,” and that public beliefs about why soldiers serve continue to reflect those traditions in consequential ways.
