When Organisational Culture meets Civil-Military Relations: Comparing Military Recruitment in the UK and Ireland

<p>Though the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland share a common military lineage, their contemporary defence postures and priorities differ significantly. While the British armed forces have been heavily involved in expeditionary warfighting and counter-insurgency during the so-called “Global War on Terror”, Ireland officially remains committed to neutrality, with the Irish Defence Forces primarily orientated to peacekeeping abroad and civil contingencies at home. In recent years, however, both countries have struggled to maintain recruitment at expected levels, prompting a series of political and military recruitment interventions. This paper adopts a comparative perspective, exploring changes in military recruitment strategies in the UK and Ireland as a window onto wider concepts of civil-military relations. In a challenge to existing scholarship on the sociology of military service, which has historically emphasised (either) patriotic or pecuniary motives for military enlistment, a new focus on the tone and context of recruitment campaigns instead highlights the importance of an alternate logic of missions, careers and occupational identity in recruiting patterns. In so doing, the paper concludes that the much-debated “civil-military gap” in fact reflects a more complex triumvirate of bureaucratic politics, organisational culture and societal legitimacy.</p>