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

Does military conscription reduce the distance between the ordinary citizen and the state? Decades after itsabolition, numerous European policy makers from across the political spectrum advocate the reintroduction of conscriptionto foster civic virtues, despite a lack of empirical evidence in this respect. Leveraging quasi-random variation in conscriptionreforms across 15 European countries, we find that cohorts of men drafted just before its abolition display significantly andsubstantially lower institutional trust than cohorts of men who were just exempted. At the same time, ending conscriptionhad no effect on institutional trust among women from comparable cohorts. Results are neither driven by more favorableattitudes toward the government, nor by educational choices. Instead, this civil–military gap unfolds through the formationof a homogeneous community with uniform values. We argue that reintroducing a compulsory military service may notproduce the effects anticipated by its advocates.