Article | Spring 2006
Citizenship and Service: Political and Social Attitudes of Active-Duty Army and Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point
Who serves in the military forces of the United States? Who should serve? In recent years, these questions have been the subject of much scrutiny and debate. With the advent of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973, the United States lost the mechanism by which a large number of citizens were recruited into military service. The end of the draft also meant that there was no guarantee that the American military would reflect, either demographically or ideologically, the society it served.
Throughout the first three decades of the AVF, several debates raged over the demographic composition of our armed forces. Most recently, the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom led many observers to note—and question—the growing role of Hispanics in the armed forces of the United States. The debate over the ideological outlook of the military came to the fore in the late 1990s when several scholars and journalists suggested that a partisan Â'gapÂ' was developing between the American armed forces and the society they were tasked to serve. This perceived gap has implications for the militaryÂ's place in American society as well as implications for when and how the United States decides to go to war.
In 2004, we conducted two studies on the political and social attitudes of members of the United States Army. The primary study was a large-scale random sample survey of 1189 members of the active-duty army. Unlike previous attempts to understand the attitudes of members of the military, this survey was not only conducted across the entire army but included both enlisted and officer personnel. This is the first and only study of its kind. The resulting data allow us to examine the interplay between political and social attitudes, demographics, and military experience.
The second study was a similar survey of 885 cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, conducted on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. As over 25% of the armyÂ's newly commissioned officers come from West Point each year, this data, in conjunction with the data from the army survey, allow us to assess the political and social attitudes of the next generation of army leaders.
The ArmyÂ's Hispanic Future
Our first analysis of the survey data focused on the attitudes and experiences of soldiers of Hispanic descent. As with the rest of America, the army has experienced a large influx of Hispanics into its ranks. Between 1991 and 2004, the population of Hispanics in the army grew from just over 4% of the total force to almost 10%.
Hispanic percent of army population over time
We found that Hispanics in the army, a population comprised largely of immigrants or the children of immigrants, face a unique set of challenges. Foremost among these challenges are education, familiarity with army life, and fluency in the English language. Despite these hurdles, Hispanic soldiers and officers are generally satisfied with life in the military and optimistic about their futures. However, Hispanics in the army are by no means homogeneous in their background or attitudes. But, like white soldiers and officers, they, as a group and especially those of Mexican origin, have enlisted in order to serve their country. We found that reported discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity is still more prevalent than conventional wisdom about the army would suggest. While Charles Moskos, John Sibley, and others have noted the relative success of African American integration into the army, soldiers of different racial and ethnic groups have dramatically different perceptions of the army environment. While 59% of white soldiers and officers believe that there is less racial and ethnic discrimination in the military than in civilian society, only 35% of African Americans and 37% of Hispanics feel the same.
There are also large disparities in the way different racial and ethnic groups view the inclusiveness of the army and the programs designed to help minorities. While minorities generally have positive feelings about affirmative action programs, white soldiers, and particularly white officers, tend to feel that they are disadvantaged in promotions due to reverse-discrimination. Given the lack of minority representation in military leadership ranks, these differences in perception of the prevalence of discrimination in the army, paired with different attitudes about possible solutions, could lead to dissatisfaction with army leadership among minority soldiers and to increased racial and ethnic tension as the proportion of Hispanics in military service continues to grow.
The Political and Social Attitudes of Army Personnel
Our second focus with our survey data was to assess the political and social attitudes of American soldiers and future officers and compare them with those of the American public. In terms of ideology, we found that the army largely mirrors the public in terms of self-placement on a liberal/conservative scale. However, a full 63% of army officers self-identify as conservative. Furthermore, we find that as rank increases, officers are more likely to align themselves ideologically with the Republican Party. This partisan alignment correlates with attitudes on social and political issues to the same degree that partisan identification correlates with attitudes in the civilian population.
These findings refute the conventional wisdom that the army is uniformly conservative and Republican. However, the fact that Republican identification in the army appears to be linearly correlated with increased rank introduces a new set of questions. Are we seeing a cohort or generational effect that will fade as the current generation of senior officers retires? Or, have institutional norms developed whereby identification with the Republican Party is implicitly encouraged?
The West Point study offers clues as to what may be causing this overwhelming Republican identification among army officers, but raises more questions in the process. In our study, we found that 61% of the cadets surveyed identified with the Republican Party and another 14% said they did not affiliate with a party but leaned Republican. Furthermore, Republican Party identification is implicitly perceived as a norm at West Point. However, we cannot conclusively determine whether this is the result of self-selection to the Academy or if cadets adopt their partisan affiliations at West Point. The bulk of evidence points towards self-selection in that the majority of cadets report that their parents identify with the Republican Party. The larger implication of this finding is that the decision to enlist in todayÂ's army, at least among college-bound youth, may be heavily influenced by partisan identification.
Our last major finding from preliminary analysis of this data concerns the propensity to vote. Whereas in the early years of the Cold War, army personnel took pride in being apolitical and voted at rates much lower than the general population, this trend has gradually reversed to the point where members of the army match the civilian population in their propensity to vote.
Works in Progress
Over the next year we hope to publish our findings on these and other questions related to the army and cadet datasets. Some of the current papers in progress are:
Citizenship and Service: The Experiences and Attitudes of Hispanic Soldiers in the United States Army
A Divided Team: Understanding the Underlying Ideology and Content of the Partisan Affiliations of Members of the United States Army
The ArmyÂ's Next Generation: The Political and Social Attitudes of West Point Cadets
Combat and Confidence: The Foreign Policy Attitudes of U.S. Soldiers Engaged in the Global War on Terror
Political Participation in Army and Mass Surveys: The Relative Importance of SES, Political Attitudes, and Mobilization
This research and the bulk of the analysis has been spearheaded by Jason Dempsey, who is addressing these and other questions in his doctoral dissertation for the Political Science Department at Columbia University. Dr. Craig Cummings helped to design and execute the cadet survey and is a co-author of the working paper on cadet attitudes. Mat Krogulecki assisted with the coding of the army survey and has taken the lead on analysis of voting. All of the work has been supervised by Dr. Robert Shapiro, Director of ISERPÂ's Public Opinion Project. Initial funding for this research was provided by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute. For more information on the Army Survey Project, contact Jason Dempsey at jkdemp@gmail.com or Robert Shapiro at rys3@columbia.edu.
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