Browsing by Author "Becker, J"

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Open Access
Disaggregated defense spending: Introduction to data
(Journal of Peace Research, 2024-01-01) Becker, J; Benson, S; Dunne, JP; Malesky, E
Theoretical and empirical research on causes and consequences of defense spending is plentiful. Most of this research uses ‘top line’ defense spending data, either as a share of GDP or as a raw monetary figure. Empirical research has been limited, however, by the ‘blunt’ nature of this data, which does not help to explain what countries are spending on. We introduce a dataset that provides information on disaggregated defense spending from 35 NATO and EU members over as many as 51 years. We discuss the main features of this data in the paper, and the replication files will enable other scholars to automate accessing it in the future. In addition to automating the extraction of NATO and European Defence Agency data on overall military expenditures, we make data on equipment, personnel, operating, and infrastructure spending available in a single dataset. We illustrate the utility of the disaggregated defense spending dataset by replicating canonical and newer analyses using both the overall data and its disaggregated components. The findings differ depending on which type of spending is considered. We found that differences in the relationship between national wealth and defense spending depended on the category of spending considered, as did the tendency toward ‘free-riding’. These exercises shed new light on seminal theories on burden-sharing and the political economy of security. Our initial analysis suggests that disaggregating defense spending is likely to improve the analysis of old and emerging research questions of considerable policy importance, and points to several opportunities to do so.
Open Access
The Continent or the “Grand Large”? Strategic Culture and Operational Burden-Sharing in NATO
(International Studies Quarterly, 2017-03) Becker, J; Malesky, E
© The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. We argue that NATO allies exhibiting more "Atlanticist" strategic cultures allocate a greater share of their defense resources to Alliance priorities than those exhibiting "Europeanist" strategic cultures. Our analysis builds on policy discussions regarding imbalances in burden-sharing in transatlantic security. Scholarship in the fields of international security and political economy offers plausible explanations for these imbalances, but does not address how allies allocate resources within defense budgets and does not statistically test effects of cultural variables on such decisions. Using evidence from 89 national security strategy documents of 24 NATO allies, we argue that the more states' strategic cultures tend toward Atlanticism, the more resources they allocated to military operations during a period in which such operations were the Alliance's top priority. During the height of NATO's "out of area" period from 2000 to 2012, there was a strong, positive correlation between, on the one hand, Atlanticist language in such documents and, on the other, allies' allocation of financial resources to military operations-as opposed to personnel, infrastructure, or equipment.