Democracy, Conscription, and War: The Effects of Political Regimes and Types of Military Recruiting on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the impact of political regimes and type of military recruitment on the probability of the occurrence of international conflicts. In the last few years, the (re) introduction of military conscription has been a focus of public debate, but empirical analysis of the issue remains limited. We argue that democratic nations with conscription-based military recruitment in place are less likely to initiate international conflicts than those with voluntary recruitment because public opinion will estimate a higher probability of direct involvement in disputes, causing political leaders to refrain from conflicts, even though stable military resources are in place. On the other hand, authoritarian nations with conscription-based recruitment systems are more likely to engage in conflicts than those with voluntary recruitment systems because political leaders are not accountable to the people, even though the cost of war is calculated in the same manner as that in democratic nations. To test this reasoning, we use directed-dyadic data from 1816 to 2005. Our analysis strongly supports our theoretical expectations.

Conscription Systems, Political Survival, and Battlefield Deaths

“…While many scholars have examined the differences between volunteer and conscripted militaries (Annaka et al 2019;Asal, Conrad, and Toronto 2017;James 2003, 2008;Cohn and Toronto 2017;Margulies 2018;Pickering 2011), ours is the first to identify the critical distinction between universal and selective conscription. We show that the latter is unique in allowing politicians to shield politically valuable constituencies from battlefield deaths, which generates military strategies that are less constrained by domestic politics than under alternative conscription systems.…”

The Discourse on the Formation of Permanent Compulsory Initial Military Service in Lithuania

“…The traditional formation of compulsory military service is changing as a result of globalisation processes, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation methods and procedures, democratisation trends in public administration, technological transformations, societal solidarity, and transparency. Scholars have addressed a wide range of issues related to the formation of compulsory military service, including the challenges of compulsory military service (Cohen, 1985), assessing conscription in the European Union (Ronge et al, 2019), analysing democracy and citizenship in the context of compulsory military service (Jahnson et al, 2019;Annaka et al, 2020;Wilson et al, 2020;Micewski, 2021;Strand, 2021), discussing compulsory military service and the welfare state (Obinger, 2020), the role of compulsory military service (Nasar, 2021), and examining how such military service provides security (Lange, 2018), among other issues. The academic literature also highlights the fact that any country's approach to the formation of compulsory military service is usually addressed in the context of cultural and ideological issues, the historical background, threats, legal aspects of the work, and the economic situation (HORN, 2019).…”