The International Security Cooperation Market

Abstract

This dissertation develops the concept of an International Security Cooperation Market. The currency of this market is the side-deal. These deals, also known as issue-linkages or side-payments, are systematically negotiated between Lead Nations - nations for which the execution of a particular security cooperation effort is a top foreign policy priority - and Laggards, which do not assign a similar level of importance to the same endeavor. I argue that institutional connectedness between leaders and laggards affects the likelihood of a laggard being successfully recruited by the leader. I demonstrate that institutional connectedness allows leaders to minimize information asymmetries and to maximize payment flexibility thus increasing the likelihood of concluding a successful bargain. I propose that this market mechanism exists parallel to traditional collective action efforts: if too few "like-minded" security cooperation partners are available, the market can fill the void.

I test this argument in two ways. First, I undertake a quantitative analysis of all security operations (i.e., multilateral military deployments) conducted since the end of the Cold War. I present an original dataset to investigate whether there exists a statistical association between institutional connectedness and troop deployments. In addition, I examine six specific instances of force generation negotiations to understand the precise causal processes at work. These case studies draw on extensive field research over two years in Nigeria, France, Ireland, Austria, Australia, Washington D.C., New York and Brussels. They rely on over 100 interviews with high-ranking government officials, including former prime ministers, foreign ministers, Joint Chiefs of Staff and UN ambassadors.

I find that there is a strong statistical relationship between institutional connectedness and security operation participation, which holds across twelve different statistical models. In addition, the case studies illustrate that the hypothesized causal mechanisms of the market model function as expected, although some are more common than others. These findings have implications for both academic theory and political practice in the fields of international cooperation, international institutions and bargaining.