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2013 39: 124 originally published online 9 April 2012Armed Forces & SocietyRachel Milstein Sondheimer, Kevin Toner and Isaiah Wilson III

Cadet Perceptions of Military and Civilian Ideology: A Research Note

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Cadet Perceptionsof Military and CivilianIdeology: A ResearchNote

Rachel Milstein Sondheimer1, Kevin Toner2, and

Isaiah Wilson III1

Abstract

Evidence of an actual or perceived gap in ideological beliefs between civilian and

military communities informs current debates on the military and its relationship to

broader society. The authors examine one cohort of the military and its members

perception of their own ideology in relation to their civilian counterparts using a2009 survey of cadets at the United States Military Academy. The authors ascertain

cadet perceptions of (1) cadet ideological leanings on individual and aggregate levels,

(2) the ideological leanings of the civilian population, and (3) the civilian populations

assessment of the militarys ideological leanings. The authors attempt to discern

whether or not this military subpopulation perceives itself as different from the rest

of society. The authors find that while members of the Armys future officer corpsperceive themselves as more conservative than their civilian peers and society writ

large, as a group they hold rather moderate political views.

Keywords

civilmilitary relations, professionalism, civilmilitary gap, ideology, West Point

1 Department of Social Sciences, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, USA2 United States Army, USA

Corresponding Author:

Rachel Milstein Sondheimer, Department of Social Sciences, United States Military Academy, 607 Cullum

Road, West Point, NY 10996, USA

Email: [email protected]

Armed Forces & Society

39(1) 124-134

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In November 2009, Chuck Norris participated in a question and answer session

with cadets at the United States Military Academy. While he became famous for his

martial arts movies and shows like Walker: Texas Ranger, Norris returned to thespotlight in 2008 through an appearance in a Mike Huckabee presidential advertise-

ment. When a cadet asked Norris about politics, he proclaimed, Im not a Democrat

or a Republican. Im a conservative. The lecture hall erupted in applause.

Chuck Norris Q&A with cadets at West Point is illuminating in terms of evalu-

ating the intent and effectiveness of Department of Defense (DoD) policies to

develop and maintain a nonpartisan military force.1 The goal of such policies is to

avoid the inference or implicit appearance of partisanship or endorsement of partic-

ular candidates, policies, and ideas by members of the Armed Forces and thus by the

Armed Forces itself. By trying to divorce itself from partisanship, the DoD attemptsto present itself and its members as lacking an inherent view of the role of govern-

ment (i.e., an ideology) so that it can dispense expert military advice when called

upon by civilian leaders.

Despite the DoDs efforts to appear nonpartisan, how did Norris sense that his

comment about conservatism would garner such enthusiasm? Conventional wisdom,

informed anecdotally by journalist accounts,2 incidents like a uniformed member of

the National Guard endorsing Ron Pauls presidential aspirations at a 2012 rally, and

more systematically through research on military beliefs and ideology,3 suggests

that service members tend to register as Republicans and fall on the conservativeside of the ideological spectrum. However, much of the academic work on this topic

indicates that this trend is more nuanced than cursory interpretation implies.4 Of par-

ticular importance to this work is the notion that some of this civilmilitary gap may

be shifting such that the ideological makeup of members of the active military

closely mimics that of the broader American population.5

In this work, we attempt to gain traction on some of these conflicting reports by

collecting data on the actual and perceived ideologies of one cohort of the military

population. We present data collected from a 2009 sample of cadets at the United

States Military Academy. We examine how military cadets perceive themselvesas individuals, view each other as a distinct group, and see other subpopulations

within society, most notably their generational peerscivilian college students.

The intent of our study is to ascertain cadet perceptions of (1) cadet ideological

leanings on individual and aggregate levels, (2) the ideological leanings of the

civilian population, and (3) the civilian populations assessment of the militarys

ideological leanings. By examining how cadets view themselves and the civilian

population as a whole, we attempt to discern whether or not this military subpopu-

lation perceives itself as different from the rest of society. We are interested in

whether or not the military actually has a different ideology than the civilian pop-ulation but also whether or not this isperceivedto be the case. We find that while

members of the Armys future officer corps perceive themselves as more conser-

vative than their civilian peers and society writ large, as a group they hold rather

moderate political views.

Sondheimer et al. 125



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Previous Research

A handful of studies illuminate the contours of the civilmilitary gap in ideology and

partisanship. The most oft-cited survey motivating this literature is an extensive inves-tigation of the party identification and ideological leanings of members of military and

civilian populations undertaken by the Triangle Institute for Securities Studies (TISS)

in the late 1990s.6 In this sample, military leaders differ significantly from elite non-

veteran civilians on matters of party and ideology. According to the TISS survey, 64

percent of the military leaders self-identified as Republican, 8 percent as Democratic,

and 17 percent as Independent. Elite nonveteran civilian respondents self-identified at

rates of 30 percent, 43 percent, and 20 percent, respectively. In terms of political ideol-

ogy, 67 percent of the military leaders self-identified as somewhat or very conserva-

tive, 28 percent as moderate, and 4 percent as somewhat or very liberal compared toelite nonveteran civilian respondents who self-identified at respective rates of 32 per-

cent, 28 percent, and 38 percent.7 A first look at the data thus highlights what Feaver

and Kohn and other scholars refer to as the gap in civilmilitary relations.8

More recent data on military beliefs confirm but also complicate these core findings.

Dempsey provides data, collected among members of the Army prior to the 2004 pres-

idential election, indicating a possible occupational rift in beliefs.9 Like the TISS sur-

vey, Dempsey finds the senior officer corps (majors and beyond) to be dominantly

conservative. Dempsey also provides data drawn from cadets at the United States Mil-

itary Academy indicating that 61 percent of those surveyed identified with the Repub-lican Party and 61 percent identified themselves as conservative. Urbens 2009 survey

confirms the general pattern of military officer identification with the Republican Party

and a conservative ideology.10 However, there are some caveats to each of these find-

ings. For example, when Dempsey examines the enlisted ranks, a different pattern

emerges, one showing a much less conservative and more moderate body that closely

mimics civilian society. Dempseys results indicate that, taken as a whole, the ideolo-

gical beliefs of members of the Army tend to mimic those of the general population in

the United States. While Urben finds a consistent trend toward Republicanism, her data

indicate that this group tends to express weak partisan affiliation.Much of this research rests on respondents self-identification with a particular

party or ideology. There is the possibility, though, that some of these responses are

influenced more by social expectations than inherent beliefs. Dempsey, for example,

finds that nearly half of the West Point cadets in his survey felt pressure to identify

with the Republican party.11 As such, we do not know whether these respondents

self-identified ideology and partisan affiliations are in line with their stances on var-

ious issues. How accurately do cadets assess and perceive their own political ideol-

ogy and the ideology of their peers? Is the civilmilitary gap actual or perceived?

Data Collection and Methodology

Data were collected from a cohort of cadets at the United States Military Academy.

Cadets in the sample were enrolled in American Politics during the Spring Semester

126 Armed Forces & Society 39(1)



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of 2009. The course is required of all cadets and is generally taken during a students

yearling (sophomore) year although some plebes (freshmen) enroll in the course as

well. American Politics instructors taught a total of 508 students across twenty-nine

sections of the course. Four hundred and seventy students completed the survey.This sample population is not a representative sample of the military, the Army,

or the Army junior officer Corps. However, accounting for cadet perceptions is a

useful gauge of future Army leadership.

Data collection was integrated as part of a lesson on political ideology. At the

beginning of the lesson, instructors displayed a quadrant grid (Figure 1) in their

classrooms. The cadets were expected to have read a chapter on political ideology

prior to the days class meeting and instructors were told not to answer any questions

seeking explanations of the meaning of the diagram. Students were first asked a

series of questions regarding perceptions of their own political ideology, the politicalideology of the Corps of Cadets and the military, and the political ideology of por-

tions of the civilian population (see Appendix A for complete survey instrument).

Specifically, cadets were asked to place each of these populations within one of the

quadrants in Figure 1. Students were also asked to reflect on how they believe the

military is viewed by the civilian population at large. The penultimate task in this

survey redirected cadets to http://www.politicalcompass.org where each student

answered a series of questions on a range of issues. A proprietary algorithm uses the

respondents answers to pinpoint a coordinate on Figure 1 representing that respon-

dents political ideology. Finally, after completing the Political Compass ideologytest, cadets were asked to input the resulting coordinate representing their unique

ideological position on Figure 1.

It is important to briefly review our interpretation of the political ideology con-

noted by each quadrant. The upper-left quadrant connotes a populist ideology in

Figure 1.The four quadrant ideological grid.




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popular parlance, the upper-right quadrant a conservative political ideology, the

lower-left quadrant a liberal ideology, and finally, the lower-right quadrant a liber-

tarian political ideology. Our expectation is that results scattered across all of thesequadrants would indicate an inability or lack of an ideological perception of a

given group while any sort of dominance of one quadrant would indicate a defined

perception of an ideological leaning.

Results

Ideological Perceptions

Table 1 provides an overview of the pertinent results regarding perceptions of mil-itary and civilian ideology. Overall, the results are quite stark with cadets eliciting

strong perceptions of themselves, the Corps of Cadets as a whole, and the military

as conservative and their civilian college peers and the civilian population at large

as more liberal.

The first question asked cadets to place themselves into one of the four ideologi-

cal quadrants. Unlike the rest of the perception questions, the survey did not include

an other option, forcing the respondents to select a quadrant. Over half of all

cadets surveyed placed themselves in the upper-right quadrant, indicating that they

perceive themselves to be economically and socially conservative. Conversely, only13 percent identified themselves as economically and socially liberal by placing

themselves in the lower left. The ideology receiving the second most self-

placements was the lower-right or libertarian quadrant with 22 percent of cadets.

Finally, 12 percent of cadets placed themselves in the upper-left, populist quadrant.

Based on the results of this sample, we estimate that about half of the Corps views

themselves to be ideologically conservative. While the possibility of sampling error

impedes our ability to say that this is the ideological belief of the majority of cadets,

we can say that it is the dominant self-identified ideology among the cadets.

Cadet self-identification is not the main purpose of this study. The subsequentdata highlight our more innovative research into how cadets perceive themselves

as a group, especially in comparison to their civilian counterparts. Following the

self-identification question, we asked cadets which quadrant they felt best character-

ized the ideological leanings of the Corps of Cadets. A definitive trend toward a per-

ceived conservative political ideology among the Corps is evident with 69 percent of

respondents seeing the Corps of Cadets as falling into the conservative quadrant.

Eleven percent placed the Corps in the populist quadrant, 5 percent in the liberal,

and 11 percent in the libertarian. Approximately 4 percent chose the other cate-

gory, with each of the eighteen cadets who responded other describing the Corpsof Cadets as having no dominant ideological quadrant. A clear majority of cadets

surveyed perceive themselves, as an organization, to be politically conservative.

Next, we sought to discern cadet perceptions of the ideological beliefs of their

civilian counterparts. In describing the ideological leanings of the civilian student




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population, 344 of the cadets, or 73 percent, placed the civilian student population in

the liberal quadrant. This is nearly the mirror opposite of the 69 percent who placed

the Corps in the conservative quadrant. Likewise, only 4 percent of cadets viewed

civilian college students as conservative. When comparing itself as a Corps to the

broader population of college students, a majority of cadets see the Corps of Cadets

as conservative yet view the civilian college student body as liberal. Thus, we begin

to see the makings of a perceived civilmilitary gap.

We expanded our research beyond a comparison of college students to see how

cadets view larger society. The survey asked cadets to place the militarys politicalideology as well as the civilian populations ideology on the quadrant diagram, with

the results drawn from Table 1. With regard to the military, 60 percent of cadets

characterize the military as conservative, 19 percent as populist, 6 percent as liberal,

and 10 percent as libertarian. Similar to the rest of the survey questions, the 4 percent

choosing the other category describe the military as not falling predominantly in a

particular quadrant.

In placing the civilian population as a whole, cadet responses did not present

nearly the disparity between civilians and the military as between the Corps of

Cadets and civilian college students. However, there is still a stark contrast in theway cadets see the military and the civilian population in terms of political ideol-

ogy. A plurality of respondents, 37 percent, places the civilian population in the

liberal quadrant. Twenty-two percent respond that the population falls in the lib-

ertarian quadrant, 21 percent in the populist quadrant, and 12 percent in the

other category. Interestingly, however, only 8 percent place the civilian popu-

lation in the conservative quadrant, the lowest percentage in any quadrant.

Although no single quadrant dominates in this question, the conservative quadrant

has a markedly lower number of responses than all other response choices. As

such, we can say the respondents generally view the military as conservative andthe civilian population as not conservative.

The last question in this part of the survey asked cadets how they think the civil-

ian population views the military. In other words, if we were to ask members of the

civilian population to place the military in a quadrant, how do you think they would

Table 1. Cadet Ideological Perceptions

Quadrant

Self-placementof individualcadets (%)

Cadetplacementof corps ofcadets (%)

Cadetplacementof military

(%)

Cadet

placementof civilian

collegestudents (%)

Cadet


population(%)

Cadet


perception ofmilitary (%)

Populist 12 11 19 8 21 8Conservative 52 69 60 4 8 78Libertarian 13 5 6 73 37 6Liberal 22 11 10 12 22 7Other 4 4 2 12 1




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they respond? Returning to Table 1, we see that responses to this question present the

strongest trend toward one quadrant with 78 percent responding that the civilian pop-

ulation perceives the military as conservative. The next highest response proportionwas the 8 percent that characterize the military as populist, while 6 percent placed

civilian perception in the liberal quadrant and 7 percent placed civilian perception

in the libertarian quadrant. The data here indicate that a vast majority of respon-

dents feel that civilians perceive the military as an ideologically conservative orga-

nization. Cadets believe that a civilmilitary gap exists and think that civilians see

this gap as well.

Ideological Realities

Cadet perception of ideological positioning paints a polarized picture of civilian and

military ideological space. What these data do not tell us, though, is whether or not

these perceptions are accurate measures of individual ideological belief systems.

The last piece of the survey was designed to capture these beliefs. Recall the penul-

timate part of the survey asked cadets to redirect their web browsers to take an ideo-

logical identification quiz on www.politicalcompass.org. After going through a

series of questions on a range of policy issues, the website provides respondents with

a coordinate placing them on the ideological grid depicted in Figure 1.

If cadet perceptions of their ideological beliefs are correct, we should observemore than half of all respondents being placed in the conservative quadrant. The

scatterplot of each respondents political compass coordinate, depicted in Figure 2,

indicates that the data do not follow the expected trend. Not only do most cadets

not fall in the conservative quadrant, it appears that the plurality of cadets fall into

the lower-left or liberal quadrant. The data in Table 2 confirm this visual assess-

ment by compiling the percentage of cadets placed into each category based on

their Political Compass coordinates. Almost 40 percent of cadets earn a coordi-

nate placing them in the liberal category with just 23 percent placed in the con-

servative quadrant.Unlike the self-perceptions of ideology analysis above, the data culled from the

Political Compass responses show a more even distribution across the quadrants. As

seen in Table 2, while the lower-left quadrant has a clear plurality of the Political

Compass placements, the distribution among the other quadrants is less lopsided

than the distribution of self-placements. The mean coordinate of all of the points

reflects this apparent lack of a dominant political ideology in the Corps with the

average across all cadets falling at (.387,.070). Moreover, most of the points are

clustered near the center with few outliers, indicating that regardless of the dominant

ideological tendencies of the Corps, most cadets have moderate beliefs.One can argue that the validity of the results concerning individual ideology rests

solely on the validity of the Political Compass quiz and algorithm. For example, if

the metric is skewed toward a liberal ideology, the indication of a somewhat liberal

Corps of Cadets might belie its actual conservative nature. Because the Political




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Compass creators do not publish their algorithm, we are unable to independently

evaluate the validity of their measure. However, we can situate the results within the

contemporary political landscape allowing for some useful comparisons. The opera-

tors of the Political Compass completed an analysis of the 2008 presidential primary

candidates and found all of the major candidates (to include the then Senators BarackObama and Hillary Clinton) residing somewhere in the top-right quadrant. While we

perhaps cannot say that cadets, as a whole, fall into the liberal quadrant, we can say

that using this metric, the cadets, as a whole, appear more economically and socially

liberal than the sitting president at the time that he was running for the office.

Table 2. Comparison of Self-Ideological Placement and Politicalcompass.org IdeologicalPlacement

QuadrantSelf-placementof cadets (%)

Politicalcompass.org coordinateplacement of cadets (%)

Upper left 12 22

Upper right 52 23Lower left 13 39Lower right 22 16

Figure 2.Scatterplot of individual cadet ideology based on political compass test.




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Conclusion

The results of our study of cadets are quite stark. Cadets believe that military and

civilian populations occupy drastically different ideological spaces. Cadets see theirown cohort as ideologically distant from their college-aged peers. They perceive the

military as a whole to be ideologically conservative while the civilian sector seems

to be liberal. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of subjects believe that civilians

perceive the military as conservative.

That a subsample of the military population perceives itself to be ideologically

distinct from its civilian counterparts raises clear concerns over the deleterious con-

sequences for the military to meet the intent of rules that seek to avoid inferences of

partisan political approval. While we avoid asking about partisanship in the survey,

we can interpret these results to mean that cadets perceive their organization and themilitary as having a particular view of the role of government that is distinctly dif-

ferent from that of the civilian population. If cadet reaction to Chuck Norris is any

indication, existing DoD policies or the Armys professional military education pro-

grams may require reevaluation.

The irony here, of course, is that these perceptions of conservative ideological

dominance are likely misperceptions. A sample of the Corps of Cadets indicates a

relatively disperse distribution of ideological leanings among its members, which

if anything, can be characterized as moderate, if not somewhat liberal, in nature.

If the Corps of Cadets and the military are perceived as being politically conserva-tive, when this is not the case within the Corps and perhaps not within the military,

then we must begin to decipher who or what is shaping this misperception. What is

the source of this distortion?

In addition to expanding this current line of work to other military and civilian

populations, future research ought to delve into the origination of perceptions of the

military as being politically conservative and why. Another broader vein of research

concerns socialization into military culture throughout ones career. If Dempsey is

correct that the senior military leadership seems to be a particular ideological bent,

how does the ideological dispersion we observe at the cadet level morph into appar-ent uniformity from precommissioning to flag ranks? Perhaps, something about mil-

itary socialization instills a particular view of the world that might put it at odds with

its civilian counterparts in the policy process. This line of inquiry is particularly

important to the maintenance of military professionalism in the policy realm. We

must continue to investigate the causes of the civilmilitary gap and acknowledge

that it might be a problem of perception.




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Appendix A

Survey Questions

1. In which quadrant do you place yourself? (upper left, upper right, lower left,

lower right)

2. Which quadrant best characterizes the Corps of Cadets? (Upper left, upper right,

lower left, lower right, other [please describe and be specific])

3. Which quadrant best characterizes the military? (Upper left, upper right, lower

left, lower right, other [please describe and be specific])

4. In which quadrant do you place your mother/mother surrogate? (Upper left,

upper right, lower left, lower right, NA)

5. In which quadrant do you place your father/father surrogate? (Upper left, upperright, lower left, lower right, NA)

6. Which quadrant best characterizes civilian college students? (Upper left, upper

right, lower left, lower right, other [please describe and be specific])

7. Which quadrant best characterizes the civilian population? (Upper left, upper

right, lower left, lower right, other [please describe and be specific])

8. In which quadrant do you think the civilian population would place the military?

(Upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right, other [please describe and be

specific])

Please go to politicalcompass.com and take the ideology quiz9. What are the results from your ideology quiz? (actual coordinates)

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Pat Shields and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on

earlier versions of this article. Any errors of fact or judgment are the responsibility of the

authors. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not represent

the views of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, and/or the

Department of Defense.

Authors NoteAn earlier version of this article was presented at the Interuniversity Seminar on the Armed

Forces and Society held in Chicago in 2009. This article also builds on previous research

reported inAttitudes Arent Free: Thinking Deeply About Diversity in the U.S. Armed Forces

(Air University Press, 2010).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,

and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,

and/or publication of this article: Partial funding for this study was provided in the form of

Faculty Research Development Grants through the United States Military Academy.




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Notes

1. The DoD issued Directive 1344.10 in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election,

updating its policy on the political activities of the Armed Forces. As Section 4 of the Direc-tive indicates, the DoD charts a fine line in encouraging its members to carry out the obli-

gations of citizenship while simultaneously keeping with the traditional concept that

members on active duty should not engage in partisan political activity and that members not

on active duty should avoid political activities implying official sponsorship, approval, or

endorsement. The directive indicates, there are prohibitions on certain behaviors in the

political arena, but for the most part, the directive leaves it to the individual to decide what

activities might imply official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement. At the time of this

writing, this Directive is up to date but the DoD will probably revise and reissue something

along these lines in 2012.Department of Defense Directive 1344.10: Political Activities byMembers of the Armed Forces,Public Law Directive 1344.10, (2008).

2. Thomas E. Ricks,Making the Corps (New York: Scribner, 1997).

3. Peter Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds.,Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap

and American National Security (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001).

4. Ibid.; James T. Golby, The Democrat-Military Gap: A Re-Examination of Partisanship

and the Profession (Chicago, IL, 2011).

5. Jason K. Dempsey, Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations(Prin-

ceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 70-94.; Heidi Urben,Civil-Military Relations in

a Time of War: Party, Politics, and the Profession of Arms (PhD, Georgetown University).6. Peter Feaver and Richard H. Kohn,Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and

American National Security (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001).

7. Ole R. Holsti, Of Chasms and Convergences: Attitudes and Beliefs of Civilians and Mil-

itary Elites at the Start of a New Millennium, in Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-

Military Gap and American National Security, ed. Peter Feaver and Richard H. Kohn

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 15-99.

8. Feaver and Kohn,Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National

Security.

9. Dempsey,Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations.10. Urben, Civil-Military Relations in a Time of War: Party, Politics, and the Profession of Arms.

11. Dempsey,Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations, 169-72.

Bios

Rachel Milstein Sondheimer is an assistant professor in the Department of Social

Sciences at the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, USA.

Kevin Tonerwas an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the

United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, and is currently serving as a Pub-

lic Affairs Officer in Afghanistan.

Isaiah Wilson III is an associate professor and director of the American Politics,

Policy and Strategy Stem in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States

Military Academy, West Point, NY, USA.



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