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The Cost of Cooperation: A quantitative study on how alliance types affect military expenditure
Swedish Defence University.
2025 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Military alliances continue to shape the global security landscape, yet existing research often overlooks the diverse nature of these alliances when examining their influence on states military expenditures. In this thesis, I investigate how four distinct alliance types in offence pacts, defence pacts, consultation pacts, and shallow pacts, affect a country’s defence spending. My main argument is that deeper commitments and military obligations should exert a greater financial burden, thereby increasing military budgets, while alliances that lack these commitments and military obligations should have a minimal effect. To assess these claims, I use an adapted cross-national dataset spanning from 1949-2018 capturing alliance arrangements and military expenditures. I conducted an analysis of the dataset utilizing quantitative methods. Contrary to expectations, the findings reveal that only offensive alliances and consultation pacts have a statistically significant effect on military expenditure, with both demonstrating a positive relationship. Neither defence pacts nor shallow pacts show a statistically significant effect on military expenditure. This result underscores the importance of differentiating among alliance types when assessing the effect that alliances have on military expenditure.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. , p. 45
National Category
War, Crisis, and Security Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-13697OAI: oai:DiVA.org:fhs-13697DiVA, id: diva2:1961772
Subject / course
War Studies, Thesis
Educational program
Master's Programme in War and Defence
Uppsok
Social and Behavioural Science, Law
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2025-06-04 Created: 2025-05-27 Last updated: 2025-09-29Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • harvard-cite-them-right
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf