National Differences in Military Values and Civilian Values: Is the Gap Culture-Free or Culture-Bound?

In this research the starting point was that a certain gap between military and civilian culture could exist, because of the inevitable difference between typical military values and new values arisen in contemporary societies, with special reference to Western affluent societies. It seems that this hypothesis belong to the culture-free side, since it rests on the concept of a military culture made of specific values, which are the same in every society. There is anyway a different viewpoint, following the trends of studies developed in the intercultural relations domain, mainly dealing with business internationalisation and cross-cultural management topics, generally known as the culture-bound thesis. In the culture-free assumption the consequence should be a pressure of social change on a supposed unique military; in the culture-bound conception a mutual and systemic adaptation of different institutions within each inclusive society driven by one's own culture could be expected. Findings in this research show that if a relative gap can be observed between military and civilian students, this varies greatly according to different groups of countries. Distances seem to be larger in countries belonging to the post-modern cluster (Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands), and lowering down in modern countries such as Slovenia, Bulgaria and Poland, and even less appreciable in Romania, South Africa and Turkey. This could give some support to the culture-free thesis, according to which military culture is specific and find more convergences with so-called traditional societies than with modern or post-modern cultures. But results are not as sharp as needed, and the culture-bound thesis cannot anyway be rejected.