Description
Why and under what conditions do states contest their ally or alliance? In recent years, some states have adopted alliance strategies that are difficult to capture with conventional balancing, bandwagoning, or hedging propositions. One example is the divergence between the Visegrad Group countries concerning their relationship vis-à-vis NATO and Russia. Balance-of-threat theory suggests that these countries should all be wary of Russian aggression and resolutely back NATO. However, this has not been the case for Hungary and, recently, Slovakia. This paper, which represents the starting point of a PhD research project, claims that leaders and governments may contest their alliance for domestic gains without a genuine intention to realign.
After an overview of the core tenets of alliance politics (balancing, bandwagoning, hedging), the paper will turn to the Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) literature underlining the importance of domestic factors, such as party politics, public opinion and institutional constraints in foreign policy making. Then, building on recent efforts to incorporate domestic factors in alliance politics, the paperwill pave the way toward a definition of “alliance contestation” and a set of hypotheses on the domestic conditions that facilitate this phenomenon.
