Who pays for rearmament? Budget recompositing and fiscal expansion in the European Union
Journal of International Studies, cilt.19, sa.3, ss.172-189, 2026 (Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 19 Sayı: 3
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.14254/2071-8330.2026/19-3/10
- Dergi Adı: Journal of International Studies
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus, Central & Eastern European Academic Source (CEEAS), EconLit, Social Science Premium Collection (ProQuest)
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.172-189
- Anahtar Kelimeler: budget composition, defence spending, European Union, fiscal expansion, government expenditure
- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine altered European security priorities, but a higher defense share does not by itself establish cuts elsewhere. This study ex-amines all ten functions of government in the EU-27 using Eurostat data for 2005–2024. Exact budget shares are paired with percentage-of-GDP outcomes, a post-2022 geographic-exposure design, country and year fixed effects, few-treated-cluster inference, false-discovery-rate control, and equivalence tests. Across the full panel, a one-percentage-point higher defense share is most strongly associated with a 0.871-point lower economic-affairs share; smaller associations for environmental protection, housing, and recreation are statistically detectable but fall within a ±0.25-point equivalence bound. Health, education, and public order associations are equally small, whereas social protection re-mains inconclusive. After 2022, the eight more-exposed countries do not show a statistically robust differential increase in the defense budget share (0.362 points; wild-bootstrap p =.267). They do, however, expand total expenditure by 3.034 percentage points of GDP (p <.001). The early rearmament episode, therefore, reflects fiscal expansion more clearly than broad program displacement.