The Effect of Military Service on Political Attitudes: A Panel Study

American Political Science Review

Volumn 71, Issue 1, 1977, Pages 131-147

  Kent Jennings, M ^a   Markus, Gregory B ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84976015954     PISSN: 00030554     EISSN: 15375943     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0003055400259340     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Orville G. Brim, Jr., and Stanton Wheeler, Socialization After Childhood (New York: Wiley, 1966), p. 27. Much of our thinking about institutions and later-life socialization has been influenced by this volume.
2. All data and estimates come from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1973 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973), Tables 425,446.
3. Samuel Stouffer et al., The American Soldier, Vols. 1 & 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949).
4. See, among others, Morris Janowitz, ed., The Professional Soldier (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1960); Morris Janowitz and Roger W. Little, Sociology and the Military Establishment (New York: Russell Sage, 1965); “The Military and American Society,” special issue of The Annals, 406 (March, 1973); Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957); Charles C. Moskos, Jr., The American Enlisted Man (New York: Russell Sage, 1970); Kurt Lang, Military Institutions and the Sociology of War (Beverly Huts: Sage Publications, 1972); and Roger W. Little, ed., Handbook of Military Institutions (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1971). Virtually all of the military socialization studies have dealt with the officer corps. See, among others, John P. Lovell, ‘The Professional Sociology of the West Point Cadet,” in Janowitz, The New Military (New York: Russell Sage, 1964); William Lucas, “Anticipatory Socialization and the ROTC,” in Public Opinion and the Military Establishment, ed. Charles C. Moskos (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1971); Sandford M. Dornbursch, “The Military Academy as an Assimilating Institution,” Social Forces, 33 (May, 1955), 316-321; Ronald G. Bauer, “Military Professional Socialization in a Developing Country” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1973); and Gary L. Wamsley, “Contrasting Institutions of Air Force Socialization: Happenstance or Bellwether?” American Journal of Sociology, 78 (September, 1972), 399-417.
5. For example, Jerald G. Bachman, Values, Preferences and Perceptions Concerning Military Service: Part II (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, 1974); Morris Janowitz, ‘The Social Demography of the All-Volunteer Armed Force,” The Annals, 406 (March, 1973), 86-93; and Morris Janowitz and Charles C. Moskos, Jr., “Racial Composition in the All-Volunteer Force: Policy Alternatives,” Armed Forces and Society, 1 (November, 1974), 109-124.
6. See Harley L. Browning, Sally C. Lopreato, and Dudley L. Poston, Jr., “Income and Veteran Status,” American Sociological Review, 38 (February, 1973), 74-85; and Phillips Cutright, ‘The Civilian Earnings by White and Black Diaftees and Nonveterans/M merican Sociological Review, 39 (June, 1974), 317-327.
7. See Bachman, Values, Preferences and Perceptions Concerning Military Service: Part II.
8. Elizabeth G. French and Raymond R. Ernest, ‘The Relationship between Authoritarianism and Acceptance of Military Ideology,” Journal of Personality, 24 (December, 1955), 181-191; Richard William Firestone, “Social Conformity and Authoritarianism in the Marine Corps,” Dissertation Abstracts, 20 (July, 1959), 394; and Donald T. Campbell and Thelma H. McCormack, “Military Experience and Attitudes toward Authority,” American Journal of Sociology, 62 (March, 1957), 482-490.
9. Klaus Roghmann and Wolfgang Sodeur, ‘The Impact of Military Service on Authoritarian Attitudes: Evidence from West Germany,” American Journal of Sociology, 78 (September, 1972), 418-433. There is an enlightening exchange of views on this article in the July, 1973 issue of the same journal between Arthur Stinchcombe and the original authors, pp. 157-164.
10. I0One of the best known and most controversial is Robert J. Lifton, Home From the War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973). A thoughtful discussion of various problems faced by the returning veterans can be found in Veterans World Project, Wasted Men: The Reality of the Vietnam Veteran (Edwardsville, 111.: Southern Illinois University Foundation, 1972).
11. A useful and sympathetic series of corrective statements is found in Paul Starr, The Discharged Army: Veterans after Vietnam (New York: Charterhouse, 1973), especially chapters 1 and 5.
12. Statistical A bstract, 1973, Table 430.
13. David Brady and Leon Rappoport, “Violence and Vietnam: A Comparison between Attitudes of Civilians and Veterans,” Human Relations, 26, no. 6 (1973), 735-752.
14. Although the military is often called a total institution, it seems more appropriate to reserve that title for the basic training and other very structured periods, during which the classic “staff/inmate” dichotomy prevails. See Erving Goffman, “On the Characteristics of Total Institutions,” in his Asylums (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1961).
15. See Moskos, p. 199; Jerome Johnston and Gerald C. Bachman, Young Men and Military Service (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, 1972), chapter 9; and Human Resources Research Organization, Attitudes toward Military Service, prepared for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (1971).
16. Brim and Wheeler, pp. 90-91.
17. Roghmann and Sodeur, pp. 428-430.
18. Brim and Wheeler, pp. 35-37.
19. The field work in each instance was carried out by the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan. Details regarding the original data collection, study design, and weighting of data are available in M. Kent Jennings and Richard G. Niemi, The Political Character of Adolescence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974). The weighted data differ only slightly from the unweighted data. Comparisons between panel respondents versus those for whom only 1965 data are available reveal virtually no differences in terms of 1965 characteristics.
20. Statistical Abstract, 1973, Table 433.
21. M. Kent Jennings and Richard G. Niemi, “Continuity and Change in Political Orientations: A Longitudinal Study of Two Generations,” American Political Science Review, 69 (December, 1975), 1316-1335; Arthur H. Miller, Thad A. Brown, and Alden S. Raine, “Social Conflict and Political Estrangement, 1958-1972” (paper presented at the meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 1973); and Arthur H. Miller, “Political Issues and Trust in Government,” American Political Science Review, 68 (September, 1974), 951-972.
22. See Miller for the items used. For present purposes we employ an additive index.
23. The text of these questions reads: “We find that people differ in how much faith and confidence they have in various levels of government in this country. In your case, do you have more faith and confidence in the national government, the government of this state, or in the local government around here?” After a probe for why the respondent made the particular choice, the next question read: “Which level do you have the least faith and confidence in-the national government, the government of this state, or the local government around here?”
24. Since length of duty in Vietnam depends to some extent on the particular branch of service, and since the qualitative nature of the tour also differs by branch, we examined the relationship between duration of tour and cynicism controlling for branch-type: ground forces (Army and Marines) versus non-ground forces (Navy and Air Force). The basic relationship between cynicism and length of duty in Vietnam was little affected by this control. For similar overall findings for the 1969 high school senior cohort, see Jerald G. Bachman and M. Kent Jennings, “The Impact of Vietnam on Trust in Government, Journal of Social Issues, 31 (No. 4,1975), 141-155.
25. Veterans World Project, Wasted Men: The Reality of the Vietnam Veteran, p. 1.3.
26. ur reasoning here parallels in part that developed by Howard Schuman on the moral versus pragmatic opposition to the war. See his “Two Sources of Anti-War Sentiment in America,” American Journal of Sociology, 78 (November, 1972) See also Starr, chapter 1.
27. The three compositional control variables are employed in all regression analysis presented in this paper. The race variable is a white (coded “0”) nonwhite (coded “1”) dichotomy. Father's socioeconomic status is measured by the Duncan decile SES code of the 1965 occupation for each respondent's father. The college variable is coded “1 if the respondent had any college experience and “0” otherwise.
28. This measure has elsewhere been called the local-cosmopolitanism scale. See Jennings and Niemi, The Political Character of Adolescence, chap. 10.
29. The classic formulation is that of George C. Homans, The Human Group (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1950), especially pp. 11-12, 101-106.
30. Moskos, The A merican Enlisted Man, p. 35.
31. The questions, in order, were: (1) “People have different views about America's involvement in Vietnam. Do you think we did the right thing in getting into the fighting in Vietnam or should we have stayed out?” (2) Do you think the government handled the Vietnam War as well as it could have?” Negative responses to this question were followed by, (3) “What do you think the government should have done?”
32. We have treated the effects on behavior in our “Political Participation and Vietnam War Veterans: A Longitudinal Study,” in The Social Psychology of Military Service, ed. Nancy L. Goldman and David R. Segal (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1976).