The literature broadly concurs that individuals are reluctant to support increased military spending during peacetime. We examine how NATO’s largest allies’ force deployment commitments shape free-riding preferences among residents of smaller allies facing military threats. Our analysis focuses on Lithuania, a country experiencing heightened security risks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Recent research on defence preferences has increasingly used survey experiments, yet it remains limited in scope, focusing primarily on Western European samples and U.S. strategies toward its allies. Many of these studies rely on hypothetical treatments and suffer from methodological shortcomings, particularly small sample sizes and numerous experimental conditions, limiting their statistical power. Our study contributes by employing a large-scale survey experiment in Lithuania, expanding beyond the conventional U.S.-centric lens to explore how a smaller NATO member interacts with a major European ally.

Lithuania’s recent agreement to permanently host a German brigade signals potential shifts in NATO’s strategic landscape, such as alliance regionalization and uncertainty over U.S. commitment. While a U.S. pullback could weaken the alliance’s foundation, Germany’s deeper engagement might foster intra-European solidarity. Lithuania’s position makes it an ideal setting to test how alliance signals influence domestic defense preferences. We will conduct a pre-registered online survey experiment (n=4000) on a nationally representative Lithuanian sample. The experimental design includes scenarios emphasizing U.S. withdrawal, increased U.S. commitment, German troop deployment, and a combined scenario of U.S. withdrawal and Germany’s deployment, with a control group receiving general NATO-related information. Our primary outcome variable is support for military spending, while a secondary measure assesses the trade-off between military expenditures and other policy priorities, such as education and healthcare.

We hypothesize that stronger allied commitments will lead to a greater preference for reducing national military spending in favor of non-military policy areas. Furthermore, we anticipate variation in the effect depending on which ally provides security guarantees. The findings will contribute to understanding how geopolitical threats shape defense preferences in highly exposed states and inform broader discussions on NATO burden-sharing dynamics in the 21st century. Our aim is to present our hypotheses and a pre-registration plan outlining the study’s design, treatments, and planned analyses.

The changed security situation in Europe, particularly the Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2022, has brought the issue of mutual assistance between European Union Member States to the forefront. This issue would become even more relevant if Ukraine were to join the EU. At the same time, the most recent elections in the United States have once again raised doubts about the reliability of NATO-partners, and led to calls for a reorientation of the the EU as a security and defence alliance. While the consequences of a possible NATO membership of Ukraine are often discussed, little research has been conducted on the effects of the EU’s mutual defence clause (Article 42(7) Treaty of the European Union (TEU)). Article 2(1) TEU declares one of the EU’s central aims to be the promotion of “peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples.” In order to achieve this goal, the EU must be sufficiently resilient, but must simultaneously respect the neutrality and distinct security and defence policies of certain Member States. In November 2023 the European Parliament proposed amendments of the European Treaties, which are currently still pending. These include significant changes to the European security and defence provisions. Part of the proposal is an amendment of the mutual defence clause enshrined in Article 42(7) TEU. Against the background of the geopolitical challenges described above, this paper examines the clause and its context in International and European Union Law as well as its significance compared to the collective defence clause of Article 5 NATO- Treaty. The proposed changes of the TEU mutual defence clause are analysed for their legal implications regarding national constitutional principles of EU Member States as well as distinctive national defence policies. Lastly, the general principles of European Law are also taken into account as part of the interpretation of the obligatory nature and the legal implications of the defence clause.

Ireland has traditionally avoided military alignment. It was neutral during the Second World war and remained outside of NATO during the Cold War. Perceived threats to military neutrality played significant roles in Ireland voting against EU treaties, and only when explicit guarantees were given did the public reverse the rejection of both the Nice and Lisbon treaty. However over the past few years there has been an increasing recognition that Ireland’s underinvestment in security and defence is posing potentially serious risks to our economic and political interests. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has contributed to a greater political awareness of the tensions between Ireland’s reality as a wealthy, western democracy deeply integrated into European and Atlanticist structures and Ireland’s identity as a militarily non-aligned state. This paper seeks to examine contemporary developments in Irelands security policy, particularly it’s increased participation in Partnership for Peace through a renewed ITPT with NATO and through EU initiatives including PESCO in the context of the shifting geopolitical context of an increasingly coordinated and security oriented EU. This paper will apply elements of ontological security theory to explain both how and why Ireland’s janus faced orientation of being militarily but not politically neutral is coming under increasing contestation from outside the state and the limits on the ability of Ireland to respond coherently in its Foreign Policy.

In the current geopolitical climate, calls for NATO members to ramp up their defence spending resonate with unprecedented urgency. Although 23 NATO members have by now surpassed the Wales Summit target of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defence, several members remain behind. This raises the question: what are the costs for NATO members of not meeting these defence spending targets? We approach this question from a status perspective. Scholarly research has convincingly shown that smaller NATO members, in particular, seek to enhance their reputation and status within the alliance by demonstrating their loyalty through visible contributions. However, the potential reputation and status costs of failing to meet the alliance’s benchmarks have not yet been studied. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that not meeting the NATO defence spending targets comes with status loss, which manifests not only in public naming and shaming but also in exclusion from informal decision-making within the alliance. Empirically, we focus on the case of Belgium, a typical case of a small NATO member that fails to meet the alliance’s spending targets. We draw on insights from in-depth elite interviews with officials from national representations and NATO international staff. Our findings contribute to debates in the literatures on alliance burden-sharing and small states’ status-seeking.

In response to internal and external challenges, the EU established the European Peace Facility (EPF) in 2021, which later has become the EUs main tool for supporting Ukraine in 2022. By using the EPF as a case study, this paper discusses various existing theoretical assumptions about the behaviour(s) of European small states. By using the theories rooted in the small state and institutional literature, the paper asks how the EU’s small Member States have behaved in the institutional structures of the CSDP? The aim of the paper is to establish whether such theories and understanding(s) help to understand the small states in the institutionalised setting of the CSDP. In other words, does the CSDP presents a unique set of enablers and limitations to small state behaviour.

Employing qualitative comparative case study analysis of four small EU Member States, this paper challenges the intergovernmental nature of the EPF and CSDP. As such, the existing small state theories lack necessary granularity and contextuality for understanding small EU states behaviour. Instead, behaviour can be explained by small states level of past engagement, political salience of the CSDP issue(s), and the perceived balance between autonomy and influence in the institutionalised context of the CSDP. Such analysis aims to provide generalisable understandings about possible future behaviour(s) of majority of EU’s Member States towards the CSDP.