Reassessing the public goods theory of alliances

The public goods theory of alliances exerts substantial influence on scholarship and policy, especially through its claim that small alliance participants free-ride larger partners. Prior statistical tests free-riding suffer from model specification generalizability problems, however, so there is little reliable general evidence about this prediction. In study, I address those limitations with a new test the hypothesis. Using data 204 1919 to 2007, examine how often states share total GDP in an decrease military spending while large allied increase spending. find support expression This implies based economic weight unusual politics, which may be due limits security as good or bargaining between members.