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The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is currently facing recruitment challenges. Similar to target market advertising in other industries, military recruitment can be optimized by aiming recruitment efforts at populations with high enrolment success potential. Using historical data, geographical regions with high potential for recruitment can be identified. This can be used to optimize the reach of recruitment events to high potential geographical regions. This paper looks at applications of facility location optimization in recruitment attraction event planning activities where there are intersections in regions each venue can attract audiences from (venue reach areas), and the probability that the events will attract targeted audience varies by geographical location. This study models the problem as a mixed integer nonlinear problem (MINLP) and provides an exact solution method. This is followed by a case study applying the model to the CAF’s recruitment events for a sample geographical area of the Canadian National Capital Region (NCR).

This article proposes a framework for understanding variation in armed groups' abilities to control wartime violence, including violence against civilians. I argue that patterns (both levels and forms) of violence are shaped by armed group leaders' attempts to meet two conflicting imperatives. To succeed, commanders must build a fighting force capable of swift, unhesitating violence; they must also maintain some control over the level, form(s), and targeting of violence. I refer to this situation as the Commander's Dilemma. Drawing on literatures from psychology and sociology, I argue that effective behavioral control cannot be achieved via extrinsic incentives (i.e. pecuniary or non-pecuniary rewards and punishments) alone. Rather, effective control of combatant violence depends upon armed group institutions intended to align combatants' preferences with those of commanders. I therefore focus analytically on political education, the armed group institution most likely to operate in this way. In particular, I hypothesize that armed groups with strong and consistent institutions for political education should display, on average, narrower repertoires of violence than those without. This argument finds preliminary support in a crossnational analysis of reported rape by rebel forces, as well as a qualitative investigation of armed groups during civil war in El Salvador. More broadly, this approach suggests that the creation of restraint is at least as important to our understandings of wartime violence as the production of violence.

Fighting for a Living investigates the circumstances that have produced starkly different systems of recruiting and employing soldiers in different parts of the globe over the last 500 years. It does so on the basis of a wide range of case studies taken from Europe, Africa, America, the Middle East and Asia. The novelty of Fighting for a Living is that it is not military history in the traditional sense (concentrating at wars and battles or on military technology) but that it looks at military service and warfare as forms of labour, and at the soldiers as workers. Military employment offers excellent opportunities for this kind of international comparison. Where many forms of human activity are restricted by the conditions of nature or the stage of development of a given society, organized violence is ubiquitous. Soldiers, in one form or another, are always part of the picture, in any period and in every region. Nevertheless, Fighting for a Living is the first study to undertake a systematic comparative analysis of military labour. It therefore speaks to two distinct, and normally quite separate, communities: that of labour historians and that of military historians.

If states are permitted to create and maintain a military force, by what means are they permitted to do so? This article argues that a theory of just recruitment should incorporate a concern for moral risk. Since the military is a morally risky profession for its members, recruitment policies should be evaluated in terms of how they distribute moral risk within a community. We show how common military recruitment practices exacerbate and concentrate moral risk exposure, using the UK as a case study. We argue that the British state wrongs its citizens by subjecting them to excessively morally risky recruitment practices. Since, we argue, this risk exposure cannot be justified by appealing to the benefits of a military career for recruits, our argument calls for reform of existing practices. Our method of evaluation is generalizable and therefore can be used to assess other states’ practices.

Research on civil war mobilization emphasizes armed group recruitment tactics and individual motivations to fight, but does not explore how individuals come to perceive the threat involved in civil war. Drawing on eight months of fieldwork with participants and nonparticipants in the Georgian-Abkhaz war of 1992–93, this article argues that social structures, within which individuals are embedded, provide access to information critical for mobilization decisions by collectively framing threat. Threat framing filters from national through local leadership, to be consolidated and acted on within quotidian networks. Depending on how the threat is perceived—whether toward the self or the collectivity at its different levels—individuals adopt self- to other-regarding roles, from fleeing to fighting on behalf of the collectivity, even if it is a weaker actor in the war. This analysis sheds light on how the social framing of threat shapes mobilization trajectories and how normative and instrumental motivations interact in civil war.

Why do some armed groups commit massive wartime rape, whereas others never do? Using an original dataset, I describe the substantial variation in rape by armed actors during recent civil wars and test a series of competing causal explanations. I find evidence that the recruitment mechanism is associated with the occurrence of wartime rape. Specifically, the findings support an argument about wartime rape as a method of socialization, in which armed groups that recruit by force—through abduction or pressganging—use rape to create unit cohesion. State weakness and insurgent contraband funding are also associated with increased wartime rape by rebel groups. I examine observable implications of the argument in a brief case study of the Sierra Leone civil war. The results challenge common explanations for wartime rape, with important implications for scholars and policy makers.

The transition from military service to civilian life is a high-risk period for suicide attempts (SAs). Although stressful life events (SLEs) faced by transitioning soldiers are thought to be implicated, systematic prospective evidence is lacking. Participants in the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (STARRS) completed baseline self-report surveys while on active duty in 2011-2014. Two self-report follow-up Longitudinal Surveys (LS1: 2016-2018; LS2: 2018-2019) were subsequently administered to probability subsamples of these baseline respondents. As detailed in a previous report, a SA risk index based on survey, administrative, and geospatial data collected before separation/deactivation identified 15% of the LS respondents who had separated/deactivated as being high-risk for self-reported post-separation/deactivation SAs. The current report presents an investigation of the extent to which self-reported SLEs occurring in the 12 months before each LS survey might have mediated/modified the association between this SA risk index and post-separation/deactivation SAs. The 15% of respondents identified as high-risk had a significantly elevated prevalence of some post-separation/deactivation SLEs. In addition, the associations of some SLEs with SAs were significantly stronger among predicted high-risk than lower-risk respondents. Demographic rate decomposition showed that 59.5% (s.e. = 10.2) of the overall association between the predicted high-risk index and subsequent SAs was linked to these SLEs. It might be possible to prevent a substantial proportion of post-separation/deactivation SAs by providing high-risk soldiers with targeted preventive interventions for exposure/vulnerability to commonly occurring SLEs.

U.S. veterans report high rates of traumatic experiences and mental health symptomology [e.g. posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)]. The stress sensitization hypothesis posits experiences of adversity sensitize individuals to stress reactions which can lead to greater psychiatric problems. We extend this hypothesis by exploring how multiple adversities such as early childhood adversity, combat-related trauma, and military sexual trauma related to heterogeneity in stress over time and, subsequently, greater risk for PTSD. 1230 veterans were recruited for an observational, longitudinal study. Veterans responded to questionnaires on PTSD, stress, and traumatic experiences five times over an 18-month study period. We used latent transition analysis to understand how heterogeneity in adverse experiences is related to transition into stress trajectory classes. We also explored how transition patterns related to PTSD symptomology. Across all models, we found support for stress sensitization. In general, combat trauma in combinations with other types of adverse experiences, namely early childhood adversity and military sexual trauma, imposed a greater probability of transitioning into higher risk stress profiles. We also showed differential effects of early childhood and military-specific adversity on PTSD symptomology. The present study rigorously integrates both military-specific and early life adversity into analysis on stress sensitivity, and is the first to examine how sensitivity might affect trajectories of stress over time. Our study provides a nuanced, and specific, look at who is risk for sensitization to stress based on previous traumatic experiences as well as what transition patterns are associated with greater PTSD symptomology.

Military experience is an important turning point in a person's life and, consequently, is associated with important life outcomes. Using a large longitudinal sample of German males, we examined whether personality traits played a role during this period. Results indicated that personality traits prospectively predicted the decision to enter the military. People lower in agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience during high school were more likely to enter the military after graduation. In addition, military training was associated with changes in personality. Compared with a control group, military recruits had lower levels of agreeableness after training. These levels persisted 5 years after training, even after participants entered college or the labor market. This study is one of the first to identify life experiences associated with changes in personality traits. Moreover, our results suggest that military experiences may have a long-lasting influence on individual-level characteristics.

Butcher examines recruitment to the Fencible Regiments from 1793 to 1802. Prior to 1803, the home defense apparatus in Britain was more fragmented than it later became during the Napoleonic Wars, with a variety of forces serving across the British Isles. Yet an understanding of its operation is crucial to the context of the introduction of the Fencibles. The English Militia had been introduced in 1757, with the commencement of the Seven Years War, to provide for the protection of England and Wales during the period of conflict. This force enlisted the rank and file through the ballot, although the practice of purchasing a substitute to take one's place invariably left the very poorest in the embodied battalions. The officers were required to meet a stringent set of property requirements, or qualifications.