Political culture and defence policy: a five-subtype model to analyze the Spanish case

Since the early 2000s, the Spanish Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces have developed a public policy planned to promote defence culture to influence Spanish society’s views, perceptions, opinions, etc., towards defence and military policies. However, this approach is flawed because, despite being defined as part of the Spanish citizens' political culture, these institutions reduce this concept to "knowledge" or "awareness of its importance". Therefore, the understanding of the Spanish defence political culture has been ill-analysed. Hence, a political culture related to defence issues can be best explained within the political culture framework, from which an ideal type, in Weberian sense, can be established. Thus, based on previous studies and from multiple survey data and using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), we test five sub-models in order to explain this political culture. The relevance of this research is evident both for the advancement of political culture theory and the enrichment of the study of Spanish Armed Forces-society relations, as well as due to its original policy-oriented perspective.