Making military conscription count? Converting competencies between the civilian and military spheres in a neoliberal Estonia

Abstract

While past decades Western societies have been shifting from mandatory military service toward all-volunteer forces, a number of them have retained conscription. A growing emphasis on individualization and neoliberalist ideas results in a tension for youths between fulfilling a duty and the need for constant self-development. We argue that a central mechanism for addressing this challenge is convertibility, the ability to use competencies gained in one sphere in another, and thus increasing the individual value of conscription for recruits. By linking convertibility to societal expectations, we demonstrate how societies shape ideas of what is convertible and why, and by relating convertibility to agency and motivation, we extend the concept to the individual level. We argue that as material rewards are limited and conscripts cannot rely on occupational motivations, convertibility has a potential to increase the value of conscription for recruits and enable them to combine institutional motivators with utilitarian motives.

Multifaceted Conscription: A Comparative Study of Six European Countries

“…Modern conscription in contemporary societies is characterised by principles of voluntarism, individualism, and gender equality (Strand, 2023), leading to a hybrid, "volunteer-ized model" of conscription, which refers to increasing material and non-material incentives for conscripts (Ben-Ari et al, 2023). It has also been referred to as "pragmatic conscription," where conscripts themselves seek tangible benefits from military service, and armed forces strive to meet these new expectations (Lillemäe et al, 2023). Motivation and interest are significant factors in the conscript's willingness to pursue a military career after compulsory military service (Truusa et al, 2018).…”

“…Lithuania reinstated conscription in 2015 and Sweden in 2017, thus becoming the first two countries to do so in peacetime. 2 In recent years, research on conscription has been mainly focused on either the effects of conscription on youth (its effect on educational attainments and income, for example; see Hubers & Webbink, 2015;Puhani & Sterrenberg, 2022) or what makes conscription viable in contemporary societies where values of individualism contradict utilitarian values of personal sacrifice for the greater good -a combination of conscription and AVF, for example, or increasing convertibility between civilian and military spheres (see Ben-Ari et al, 2023;Lillemäe et al, 2023). Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022 has further revived the discussions on conscription.…”