The growth in military expenditure in Germany 1951–2011: did parties matter?

Abstract

We examine whether government ideology was correlated with the growth in military expenditure in Germany over the period 1951–2011. Using various measures of government ideology, the results do not show any effect. The exception is an ideology measure based on the Comparative Manifesto Project (left-right scale): using this measure, the results show that the growth in military expenditure increased by about 2.4 percentage points, when the ideology variable (right-wing) increased by one standard deviation. This effect, however, is based on observations until the early 1960s and cannot be generalized. The major political parties agreed on how to evaluate international risks and threats. Government ideology retired to the background. We conjecture that the consensus among the major parties will persist – even if military spending needs to be increased in response to new international risks and threats.

Keywords:

• Military expenditure
• Partisan politics
• Economic policy-making
• Germany

JEL Codes:

• D72
• H0

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Vincenzo Bove, Georgios Efthyvoulou, Andreas Glas, Todd Sandler, Vassilis Sarantidis, Jürgen Schnell, Ron Smith, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments. We are also grateful to Lisa Giani-Contini for proof-reading the paper. Alexander H Schwemmer and Leonard Thielmann provided excellent research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Tridimas (2015) describes that in ancient Athens, war meant redistribution benefitting the poor at the expense of the rich who bore a disproportionate burden of the war. Governments may well increase military expenditure to stimulate the economy (‘Military Keynesianism’; see, e.g. Griffin, Wallace, and Devine 1982).

² Strauss (2015) examines whether government ideology influences arms races.

³ Bayer and Naunheim (2014) describe how German military expenditure is composed but do not relate to government ideology.

⁴ Alternatively, we included a dummy variable that takes on the value 1 in the 1991–2011 period and the value 0 in the 1951–1990 period. The alternative coding implies that a shift in the growth rate after 1990 occurred. Inferences regarding government ideology do not change.

⁵ See, for example, Albalate, Bel, and Elias (2012); Bove and Brauner (forthcoming); Bove and Nisticò (2014); Brauner (forthcoming); Collier and Hoeffler (2007); Dunne, Perlo-Freeman, and Smith (2008); Gadea and Montañes (2001); Nordhaus, Oneal, and Russett (2012); Sandler and Hartley (2007); Solomon (2005).

⁶ Other recent empirical studies on partisan politics include Hartmann (2014), Herwartz and Theilen (2014), Brech and Potrafke (2014), and Wiese (2014).

⁷ Criticism of the CMP also encompasses electoral motives: politicians may well design manifestos to become (re-)elected. It is conceivable that manifestos thus do not describe pure ideology.

⁸ See Bove and Cavatorta (2012) on the composition of military expenditure in NATO countries (personnel, equipment, infrastructure, and other).

⁹ In the German states, government ideology did have an effect: right-wing governments spent more on universities, introduced tuition fees, hired more cops, and promoted economic freedom (Oberndorfer and Steiner 2007; Kauder and Potrafke 2013; Potrafke 2013; Tepe and Vanhuysse 2013).

¹⁰ Smith (2013) predicts that the military industry is likely to become more concentrated when the world gets more peaceful and military expenditure decreases.