Varieties of European Military Freeriding

Do European member states free ride in allocating funds for defence purposes? Findings in the literature, particularly those regarding European NATO members, remain inconclusive. We argue that, methodologically, existing research has been insufficiently attentive to spatio-temporal dynamics, which can lead to biases. Considering the regional concentration of inter-governmental connectivity at the EU level, a broader security “web” of neighbouring EU member states and, specifically, their defence spending patterns allow for investigating the role of the regional context as a conditioning influence (Allen et al. 2017). Basing our analysis on the STADL (Spatio-Temporal Autoregressive Distributed Lag) model proposed by Cook et al. (2021), we submit that our contribution is mainly threefold. First, we take care of both spatial and temporal correlation. Second, we accurately derive direct and indirect effects – another aspect that has been largely neglected in the existing literature. Last but not least, we present a range of important mechanisms which could capture different dimensions of free-riding. Apart from the spatial effect of other members’ spending and that of US expenditure, we also look at the influence of US troop presence and Russian military expenditure. Furthermore, we investigate whether these patterns diverge between members and non-members of NATO. We uncover heterogeneous influences that either encourage EU member states to free ride or restrain this type of behavior, which suggests implications for EU/European strategic autonomy in the defence field.