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22 British J. Pol. & Int'l Rel. 3 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/bhjlplcs22 and id is 1 raw text is: A|||:. Political Studies B Original Article 32| The British Journal of Politics and B b b •|International Relations omb or b d . ow 2020,vol.22(1)3-23 © The Author(s) 2019 party ideologies affect Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permnissions the balance of foreign aid DOI: 0.I177/1369148119883651 journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi and defence spending OSAGE Georg Wenzelburger and Florian Bller Abstract This article contributes to a growing literature that questions the traditional 'politics stops at the water's edge' paradigm. Left- and right-wing parties hold diverging ideologies and articulate specific party programmes regarding policy priorities in the realm of foreign and security affairs. The impact of partisan contestations over foreign policy priorities can be traced in defence and foreign aid spending. We understand this 'bomb-or-build'-balance as two sides of a coin which shapes the international posture of democracies. Our quantitative analysis of 21 OECD countries (1988-2014) reveals that the ideological positions of the parties in government influence the relative importance of military expenditures versus foreign aid. The more the ideological position of a government is tilted towards the military (and against internationalism), the more the 'bomb- or-build'-balance shifts in favour of military spending (and in disfavour of foreign aid). Keywords defence spending, foreign aid, foreign policy, party ideology Introduction Why do some democracies favour 'hard power' instruments and invest in their military while others position themselves as 'civilian powers' and put emphasis on international development assistance? We argue that in order to explain the puzzling variance in spend- ing on defence and foreign aid - what we term as the 'bomb-or-build'-balance (BBB) - it is necessary to consider the underlying domestic politics. In particular, we hold that the ideological positions of the parties in government influence the relative importance of military versus foreign aid expenditures. The more the ideological position of a govern- ment is tilted towards the military (and against internationalism), the more the BBB shifts in favour of military spending (and thus in disfavour of foreign aid). While our argument Department of Political Science, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany Corresponding author: Florian B6ller, Department of Political Science, University of Kaiserslautern, Erwin-Schroedinger-StraBe, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany. Email: boeller@sowi.uni-kl.de

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