Bowling with Veterans: The Impact of Military Service on Subsequent Civic Engagement

From Tocqueville to Putnam, scholars have argued that civic engagement is not only the key to a healthy democracy, but also that civic engagement begats more civic engagement. In this paper I examine the effects of military service on subsequent civic engagement. The key finding is that men who served in the US military prior to the advent of All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 are actually less civically engaged than those who never served. Military service has no significant effect on civic attitudes. These findings represent an especially powerful challenge to the notion that civic participation begets more civic participation. The fact that serving the citizenry through military duty actually decreases one’s subsequent civic involvement indicates that we cannot assume that all forms of civic activity are equally effective at inculcating their participants with civic values and habits. In fact, these findings indicate a need for a more refined conceptualization of the relationships between civic activity and future civic involvement.