All Good Things Come in Threes? Exploring a Three-Dimensional Model of the Willingness to Defend One’s Country

Abstract

The willingness among citizens to defend one’s country has long been seen as a cornerstone of the Swedish concept of “total defense” and has risen to broader prominence after the Ukrainian defense against the 2022 Russian invasion. Defense willingness is most commonly conceptualized as an attitude towards defending against an attack on one’s country. Despite its both old roots and new-found fame, theory, and measurements provided to capture this construct have been largely overlooked in the international scholarly community, with the bulk of debates having been internal to interested countries. This article empirically tests a recently proposed three-dimensional structure for the concept: a proposition that the overarching attitude can be divided into i) personal willingness (to defend one’s country), ii) collective willingness, and iii) supportive willingness (with underlying categories). Using two waves of Swedish survey data the article demonstrates that the theoretical three-dimensional structure proposed can be validated as fitting the empirical data decently, and that it is superior to other models tested. This model bodes well as a starting point for international research on this construct, although more work is required for a more satisfactory measurement, as are discussions on dimensional structure.