| Summary/Abstract |
It is commonly accepted that peace operations produce public goods. Informed by theories of collective action, the article tests the claim that middle powers were free-riders in NATO’s peace operations in the Balkans (IFOR, SFOR, KFOR) from 1995–2001. In so doing, we charge that calculating the level of defence spending as a share of a country’s GDP, which has become the standard index in the literature, is limiting. We suggest that the active military-duty force share index is a better index to use, and find that middle powers did not free-ride in NATO’s peace operations in the 1990s. Quite to the contrary: they contributed more to NATO’s public good of peacekeeping than countries like France or Germany, and more than expected based on their economic abilities measured in GDP. The article then asks what could be inferred from this analysis, and offers theoretical and methodological points of critique before suggesting new avenues for future research in this vibrant research programme.
|