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"The development of modern military conscription systems is usually seen as a response to countries' security needs, and as reflection of national political ideologies like civic republicanism or democratic egalitarianism. This study of conscription politics in France and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century challenges such common sense interpretations. Instead, it shows how despite institutional and ideological differences, both countries implemented conscription systems shaped by political and military leaders' concerns about how taking ordinary family men for military service would affect men's presumed positions as heads of families, especially as breadwinners and figures of paternal authority. The first of its kind, this carefully researched book combines an ambitious range of scholarly traditions and offers an original comparison of how protection of men's household authority affected one of the paradigmatic institutions of modern states"--

The development of modern military conscription systems is usually seen as a response to countries' security needs, and as reflection of national political ideologies like civic republicanism or democratic egalitarianism. This study of conscription politics in France and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century challenges such common sense interpretations. Instead, it shows how despite institutional and ideological differences, both countries implemented conscription systems shaped by political and military leaders' concerns about how taking ordinary family men for military service would affect men's presumed positions as heads of families, especially as breadwinners and figures of paternal authority. The first of its kind, this carefully researched book combines an ambitious range of scholarly traditions and offers an original comparison of how protection of men's household authority affected one of the paradigmatic institutions of modern states

How did the state protect and then subvert men's household authority when the state was exclusively staffed by men? I answer the above question by critically fusing neo-Weberian scholarship on modern state development with feminist political sociology on gender and the state, and by examining establishment of the French conscription system. When first creating a mass army in the nineteenth century, the French state offered family-based exemptions, balancing between expanding state power and maintenance of men's household authority. However, intensification of twentieth-century total war led to a decrease in family-based exemptions, and the state's diminished support of men's household authority. I thereby identify how the fiscal-military state first supported then diminished men's household authority through one of the state's most masculine arms.

This article places feminist state theorists in dialogue with the Weberian "bellicist" tradition, and argues that locating patriarchalism within modern European states remains a worthwhile endeavor. By tracing conscription exemptions for fathers and husbands in France from the French Revolution's levée en masse through to Napoleonic conscription and into the first half of the twentieth century, this article shows that consideration for male citizens' patriarchal positions was a consistent feature of French conscription. This is significant given that conscription was an especially powerful and invasive institution of modern states and central to states' survival within interstate competition. Yet even this intrusive institution did not undermine local patriarchalism in the country many consider to be the cradle of modern mandatory conscription. An extractive state institution was built on crystallization of male familial authority at the level of on-the-ground citizens.

With establishment of the U.S. Selective Service System in 1917, selective draft rules placed consideration of registrants' economic obligations to their dependents front and center. By observing the Canadian and British recruitment experiences, American policy makers opted against universal conscription since they believed it would be costly because of the need to offer family allowances and opted against a voluntary system since they believed that too many bachelors would fail to volunteer. Dependency deferments were designed to minimize the social and economic costs of war. Local board members determined whether a man was a genuine breadwinner or not, and individual discretion on this matter contributed to the higher rates of African American draftees during WWI compared to white draftees, since African American men were less likely to be recognized as genuine breadwinners. Selective Service rules thus resulted in reproducing female citizens as economic dependents and yielded durable inequalities among registrants. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society/Sage Publications Inc.]

With establishment of the U.S. Selective Service System in 1917, selective draft rules placed consideration of registrants' economic obligations to their dependents front and center. By observing the Canadian and British recruitment experiences, American policy makers opted against universal conscription since they believed it would be costly because of the need to offer family allowances and opted against a voluntary system since they believed that too many bachelors would fail to volunteer. Dependency deferments were designed to minimize the social and economic costs of war. Local board members determined whether a man was a genuine breadwinner or not, and individual discretion on this matter contributed to the higher rates of African American draftees during WWI compared to white draftees, since African American men were less likely to be recognized as genuine breadwinners. Selective Service rules thus resulted in reproducing female citizens as economic dependents and yielded durable inequalities among registrants.

Figures like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and former French National Front leader Marion Maréchal are seeking to establish what we call a new globalist illiberal order. The globalist illiberal agenda extends elements of the globalist project while reclaiming a radicalized view of Christian democracy. Europe's far-right views the global order as composed of strong nations who need to defend their sovereignty on 'cultural' issues while protecting their common Christian roots. We trace their project by focusing on two new institutions of higher education, Hungary's National University of Public Service Ludovika (Ludovika-UPS) and the Institut de sciences sociales, économiques et politiques (Institute of Social Sciences, Economics and Politics—ISSEP), based in France and Spain. Through these institutions, globalist illiberals aim to cultivate new leaders outside the liberal 'mainstream' and redefine the meaning of Christian democracy. We conclude that surging nationalism among mid- to small powers is not resulting in deglobalization but is fostering illiberal globalization, which has no place for those who do not fit in their exclusionary vision of Christian Europe.