Logotyp: till Försvarshögskolans hemsida

Defence spending has become a topic of interest for many countries since the Russian commitment to its attritional land war in Ukraine. This trend is not just limited to Europe; global military expenditure reached an all-time high in 2023. Belgium is no different in this, but it has a lot of catching up to do, seeing as it was the second-lowest defence spender among NATO members with 1,21 % of GDP. The promise of reaching 2 % by 2030 is therefore ambitious, considering Belgium’s historic trend of cutting its defence spending. If Belgium succeeds in upping its spending to the promised targets, there will be enormous opportunities for the defence sector and the military, however, the question is how the policy has changed, and if these increases address the problems at hand.

The Multiple Streams Framework developed by John W. Kingdon provides a model to better understand how Belgian’s defence spending policy has changed by dividing policy-making processes into three streams; the problem stream where problem formulations compete for attention, the policy stream where policy proposals get formulated, and the politics stream where policy decisions are made. According the to MSF there exists a policy window when the problem, policy and politics stream converge. The intention of this research is to uncover the themes and people populating these streams to better understand how Belgium defence spending policy now projects a decade-long trend reversal. Findings from this study suggest that the multiple streams framework is applicable on the case of Belgium’s defence spending pivot, in part due to the change of government and change in public opinion that set up the conditions for the policy window to open, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine likely to be the focusing event that allowed the political entrepreneur, Minister of Defence Ludivine Dedonder, to push through this ambitious increase in defence spending.