Jumping on the Bandwagon: An Interest-Based Explanation for Great Power Alliances

Sweeney, Kevin; Paul, Fritz

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2004.00158.x

Cited by 34 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…Disaggregation helps measure the extent to which a country is actually pursuing shared objectives. It helps distinguish between bandwagoning (Sweeney & Fritz, 2004;Cladi & Locatelli, 2012) and balancing -hard (Posen, 2006) or soft (Pape, 2005). Disaggregating avoids conflating spending on collective defense and 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 Figure 5 demonstrates the significant variation in the composition of 2014 defense budgets across the transatlantic community.…”

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confidence: 99%

Accidental rivals? EU fiscal rules, NATO, and transatlantic burden-sharing

Becker

2019

Journal of Peace Research

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Both theorists and practitioners continue to show interest in transatlantic burden-sharing. Resource allocation choices – both to and within defense budgets – are grand strategic choices, and membership in alliances and security communities affects how states make those choices. International security and political economy scholarship offers plausible explanations for transatlantic imbalances in military expenditures. However, NATO allies and EU member-states have pledged to one another not just to spend more on defense, but to allocate more defense resources to equipment modernization. Current scholarship does not fully explain the sources of such within-budget choices, which would help anticipate the likelihood of such pledges succeeding. Building on work by security scholars, defense and political economists, and scholars of interorganizational relations, I argue that stringent fiscal rules dampen the kind of defense spending NATO and EU strategists seek. Governments respond to increasingly stringent fiscal rules by reducing overall defense expenditures, while at the same time shifting existing defense resources to personnel, and away from equipment and operational expenditures. I find evidence in support of this argument by using education levels in the states in question as instruments for fiscal rules. This phenomenon represents a significant risk for important transatlantic strategic initiatives, namely NATO’s Wales pledge on defense investment.

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confidence: 99%

Accidental rivals? EU fiscal rules, NATO, and transatlantic burden-sharing

Becker

2019

Journal of Peace Research

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“…It would propose that China's neighbors bandwagoned with it because it was simply too large to balance (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, 2009: 375;Schweller, 1994). But such an 'interest-based explanation' (Sweeney and Fritz, 2004) cannot elucidate (a) the obvious distinction the Qing dynasty made between Confucian in-and out-groups in its diplomacy, (b) the missing opportunistic balancing (the logical inverse of bandwagoning) by the Confucian periphery during difficult moments for the Qing (the long 17th-century consolidation and extremely resource-demanding 18th-century western wars), (c) the lack of any detectable anti-Chinese alliance coordination among Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, both among themselves and/or with China's other peripheral targets (extreme anti-Sinic 'underbalancing' [Schweller, 2004]), and (d) China's manifest, 200-year disinterest in invading the Confucian periphery despite ample opportunity and gain to be won. 8 A realist/interest-based approach better fits China's relations with non-Confucians.…”

Section: Findings and Methodological Prebuttalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A ‘Confucian Long Peace’ in pre-Western East Asia?

Kelly

2011

European Journal of International Relations

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International Relations theory about East Asia has increasingly argued that East Asia before Western penetration enjoyed a protracted peace. As explanations, a Chinese military hegemony would fit realist theory fairly well, while a cultural peace based on shared Confucian norms would be a significant anomaly. A Confucian Long Peace challenges widely held, albeit Eurocentric, realist presumptions including the perils of anarchy, the arms-racing and misperception of the security dilemma, and the regularity of power balancing. This article therefore investigates, first, whether such a peace did in fact exist, and, second, whether this might be attributed to Confucianism. A cultural peace theory requires a strong anti-war cultural norm and a shared sense of community. Skepticism is established by examining three comparative cultural spaces that nonetheless did not enjoy a culturally informed peace: the classical Greek citystate system, early modern Christendom, and the contemporary Arab state system. All were deeply riven and competitive. Nevertheless, empirical investigation of the last Chinese (Qing) dynasty before the Western arrival (1644-1839) demonstrates that it was remarkably peaceful toward its Confucian neighbors, while more 'normally' exploiting its power asymmetry against non-Confucian ones. Processtracing specialized Chinese practices toward fellow Confucians suggests that the low Confucian war finding emanates from cultural restraint.

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“…The Correlates of War project’s Composite Index of National Capabilities (CINC) has become widely accepted as an indicator of power (e.g. Geller, 1993; Maoz, 2004; Sweeney and Fritz, 2004). 14 It incorporates an industrial, a military, and a demographic dimension, translating a state’s score into a share of the international system (Singer et al ., 1972; Singer, 1988).…”

Section: Operationalization and Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conditions of intergovernmental armaments cooperation in Western Europe, 1996–2006

Thiem

2011

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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Defence cooperation between Western European countries has increased considerably since the end of the Cold War. An analytical distinction can be made between political and economic cooperation, the latter having been neglected by political scientists. This study advances the debate on economic cooperation by identifying sources of variation in the European Union (EU)-15 countries’ membership rate in cooperative armamentsforaaimed at restructuring the demand side of European defence from 1996 to 2006. By combining six models from three different schools of thought, the risk of confirmation bias through intra-paradigmatic reasoning is reduced. At the same time, fuzzy-set analysis opens up the space for data-driven combination effects. Two distinct combinations form sufficient paths leading to high rates of membership. Most importantly, intentions to create collective defence technological and industrial benefits combine with trust in partners’ ability and integrity to form an essential combination of conditions for governments to pursue cooperation on armaments.

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Jumping on the Bandwagon: An Interest-Based Explanation for Great Power Alliances

Cited by 34 publications

References 23 publications

Accidental rivals? EU fiscal rules, NATO, and transatlantic burden-sharing

Accidental rivals? EU fiscal rules, NATO, and transatlantic burden-sharing

A ‘Confucian Long Peace’ in pre-Western East Asia?

Conditions of intergovernmental armaments cooperation in Western Europe, 1996–2006

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