Seminars

Abstract: This paper explores the role played by compulsory military service in the process of nation-building, focusing on the development of national values and the erosion of social cleavages. We exploit the Argentine case during the 20th century, where every year a group of young men were called to serve on the basis of a lottery. We designed a survey and collected over 2,000 responses from 29 different cohorts exposed to the lottery. We estimate long-run effects, as the youngest in our sample served almost 30 years ago. We find that, while doing the military service did not affect the strength of national sentiment, it did foster social integration: former conscripts perceive themselves to be more similar to their countrymen, reflecting weaker social cleavages, and adopt better attitudes toward out-group members, including indigenous people, people of another sexual orientation, and people from a different socioeconomic background. To understand the mechanisms driving these results, we analyze the content of an open-ended question and the composition of social networks. We find evidence consistent with the military service exposing individuals to a more diverse set of peers and promoting bonding between them.

 

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