“Alliances from the Inside Out:
A Theory of Domestic Politics and Alliance Behavior”

Existing work cannot explain why countries form or maintain alliances absent security threats, though we know countries routinely do just these things. I argue countries form alliances to manage the essential problem that they must use finite budget resources to provide domestic security and national security; the guns versus butter dilemma. States sometimes form alliances to “contract out” national security so they can allocate more resources to domestic concerns. Not only should we expect alliances to form and endure absent threats, but we should expect more generally that domestic political and economic demands will influence alliance decisions.

Link to Dissertation
"Alliances from the Inside Out:
A Theory of Domestic Politics and Alliance Behavior"