What impacts one's willingness to defend? A study of the influence of military training in Sweden

Sammanfattning: This thesis studies the effect of military training on one's willingness to defend by answering the question: How does military training influence the likelihood of people expressing (or having) a willingness to defend one's country? Using difference-in-differences and IV approaches within a linear probability model framework, it exploits two exogenous variations in conscription policy on new survey data in Sweden. First, conscription has almost exclusively covered men, leaving two distinct groups. Second, the treatment intensity has varied over time on a cohort level. The Cold War era is marked by high, and the following period ensuing its end, low conscription. Overall, military training is not found to be a significant determinant of one's willingness to defend. In perhaps the most relevant metric, the willingness to partake in combat roles, no effects are detected. Notably, the more prominent effect seems to stem from being in the treatment group, which encompasses gender effects. These gender effects are less significant in the other metrics, but military training remains, on average, not a prominent determinant of one's willingness to defend one's country.