Social Research and the Military: A Cross-National Expert Survey

Abstract

The subject of this study is military sociological research. The study is based on an expert survey conducted by e-mail, in successive stages, among a group of colleagues from different countries who agreed to participate. These countries are Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. The basic questions we posed to ourselves in this study were of two types. One was of a methodological nature, namely what are the advantages/disadvantages and the prospects offered by a survey carried out by e-mail? The second area of interest regarded content and was aimed mainly at providing answers to the following questions: (1) Who is the typical military sociologist? (2) Who commissions such research, and what procedures do they use? (3) How much freedom do researchers have in this field? and (4) What is the social status of military sociological research in the various countries? There are common traits that characterize this research in the various countries as well as distinguishing ones: alltogether they provide a useful world overview on the subject. Since the study was conducted at the beginning of the 2000, a question arises about the current situation of social research within and for military institutions. Under many respects, actors are the same, and situations, even though within a more complex and often unpredictable environment, are as usual, war in its conventional meaning, conflict and non-conflict relationships, peace-keeping, institution building, humanitarian aid and civil population relief in dramatic non-war circumstances. Social research and social scientists must always work within the limits and the idiosyncratic outlook of an organization. As noticed in one of the last volumes reflecting on research methods and behaviors in military studies (Soeters et al. in Routledge handbook of research methods in military studies. Routledge, New York, 2014), if doing research in an organization is always difficult, “…studying the military is probably more complex because, more than other organizations, the military is a world on its own, an island within society-at-large on which its inhabitants work and live together” (Soeters et al. in Routledge handbook of research methods in military studies. Routledge, New York, 2014: 3). Today as in the past, military organizations want to control on-going research and dissemination of results as well, they can influence the timing of the research schedule or limit publication by means of delay or even final prohibition to let findings go “outside”. Situations as such have been experienced and accounted by experts surveyed in the 2003, and they are easy to be seen currently more or less untouched: what are the relationships between theoretical work and empirical research within the military and on crucial military affairs? What methods and subjects are preferred? Today as yesterday, as Soeters et al. say “…one can observe a societal and political push to know and an organizational tendency, however slight, to hide.” (Soeters et al. in Routledge handbook of research methods in military studies. Routledge, New York, 2014: 4).