Political culture and defence policy: a model of five-subtypes to explain the Spanish defence political culture

Abstract

ABSTRACT European citizens’ attitudes towards defence are a fundamental element of common identity in the EU’s aim of becoming a unitary international actor. In Spain, since the early 2000s, the Spanish Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces have developed a public policy to promote defence culture to influence Spanish society’s views, perceptions, opinions, etc., towards defence and military policies. However, this approach is flawed because, despite being defined as part of the Spanish citizens’ political culture, these institutions reduce this concept to ‘knowledge’ or ‘awareness of its importance’. Therefore, the understanding of the Spanish defence political culture has been ill-analysed. Hence, a political culture related to defence issues can be best explained within the political culture framework, from which an ideal type, in the Weberian sense, can be established. Thus, based on previous studies, using survey data and both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA & CFA), we test five sub-models to explain this political culture. This research is relevant to the study of the defence political culture because it reaffirms the existence of different cultural subtypes and civil–military relations and shows that the cultural gap in the convergence of values must be worked on in a segmented manner.