Rusty guns and buttery soldiers: unemployment and the domestic origins of defense spending

Abstract

Scholars and practitioners continue to debate transatlantic burden sharing, which has implications for broader questions of collective action and international organizations. Little research, however, has analyzed domestic and institutional drivers of burden-sharing behavior; even less has disaggregated defense spending to measure burden sharing more precisely. This paper enhances understanding of the relationship between national political economies and burden shifting, operationalizing burden shifting as the extent to which a country limits or decreases defense expenditures, while at the same time favoring personnel over equipment modernization and readiness in the composition of defense budgets. Why do countries choose to allocate defense resources to personnel, rather than equipment modernization? I find that governments slightly decrease top-line defense spending in response to unemployment while shifting much more substantial amounts within defense budgets from equipment expenditures into personnel. This research highlights the intimate connection between Europe’s economic fortunes, transatlantic security, and burden sharing in North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union – of particular interest as a pandemic buffets the transatlantic economy. It also points policy analysts toward factors more amenable to political decisions than the structural variables generally associated with burden sharing, bridging significant gaps between defense economics, security studies, and comparative political economy.

Transatlantic Shakedown: Presidential Shaming and NATO Burden Sharing

“…The controls account for defense economic insights, namely public choice theorizing that population size and GDP affect defense spending, 12 as well as joint product theorizing that allied spending and alliance strategy affect defense spending (Sandler and Hartley 1999). We account for unemployment (Becker 2021), which is likely to dampen 3C’s spending, as could fiscal rules (Becker 2019; Christie 2019). We also add threat (Walt 1985), which should affect defense spending, along with strategic culture (Becker and Malesky 2017), party ideology (Hofmann and Martill 2021), institutionalization (Wallander 2000), and the passage of time.…”

Security and defense are truly a priority for the member states of the European Union: fact of hoax?

“…New security risks, along with the change of character and form of threats, require that the states adopt, except for many political, military, organizational and legislative measures, adequate economic measures as well (Ivančík, 2012). The issue of national defence is also an economic issue (Hitch, McKean, 1960;Grant, 2019;Palavenis, 2020;Becker, 2021;Becker, Dunne, 2021).…”

Transcending Two Percent: Toward a Prioritarian Model of NATO Burden-Sharing

“…Although it existed in a more informal or implicit form for decades, NATO's current burden -sharing regime was first formally articulated and enshrined in the form of an alliance -wide agreement at the 2014 Wales Summit. This Defense Investment Pledge (DIP), as it was then officially called, was endorsed by all allied Heads of State and Government and is considered binding on member states (Becker 2021;NATO 2022b). At the core of the DIP is a pair of normative metrics that function both as action -guiding prescriptions to which individual allies must adhere and as evaluative criteria with which ally -level burden -shares can be assessed.…”