Does A Change of Government Influence Compliance with International Agreements? Empirical Evidence for the NATO Two Percent Target

Johannes Blum, Niklas Potrafke and Tomer Blumkin

No 7489, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We examine whether changes of government influence compliance with international agreements. We investigate compliance with the NATO two percent target to which all NATO countries committed themselves during the NATO summit in Wales in 2014. The dataset includes the military expenditure by NATO countries over the period 2010-2018. The results suggest that countries that do not (yet) comply with the two percent target have smaller growth rates in military expenditure relative to GDP when they experienced a large change of government, e.g. a change from a rightwing to a leftwing government, than countries that did not experience such a large change of government since the NATO summit in 2014. Countries that experienced a large change of government are, thus, less likely to comply with the two percent target. Future research should examine the credibility problem of national governments in other international agreements too.

Keywords: international agreements; compliance; credibility; time inconsistency; change of government; military expenditure; two percent target; NATO; burden sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D74 H41 H56 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Does a Change of Government Influence Compliance with International Agreements? Empirical Evidence for the NATO Two Percent Target (2020)
Working Paper: Does a Change of Government Influence Compliance with International Agreements? Empirical Evidence for the NATO Two Percent Target (2020)
Journal Article: Does a Change of Government Influence Compliance with International Agreements? Empirical Evidence for the NATO Two Percent Target (2019)
Working Paper: Does a Change of Government Influence Compliance with International Agreements? Empirical Evidence for the NATO Two Percent Target (2019)
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