Abstract
The article deals with citizens' voluntary involvement in military and paramilitary structures and activities related both to war and peacetime. At present, this kind of civic participation is marginalized, or quite suppressed in most of NATO and EU member states.
However, in some countries the voluntary civic participation still plays a significant role in total defence capacity. So a decision whether to incorporate and maintain a volunteer civic element in the armed forces and in defence capacities or not remains a strategic choice to be made by governments and nations in the sphere of national defence.
The article briefly defines features of the examined phenomenon; then it explores and reviews selected significant forms of citizens' defence volunteering in Western countries, both in past and present; lastly, the perspectives of civic voluntary participation are assessed with regard to recent trends of societal evolution and defence budgets reduction.