Burden Sharing, Burden Shifting, and Strategy in the Nordic States

Scholars and policy-makers continue to debate transatlantic burden-sharing. While economists have shed much light on cross-country variation in burden-sharing behavior, only qualitative work in the security studies field has addressed the nature of contributions to shared priorities, and neither field has adequately addressed sources of within-country variation, which is of primary interest to policy-makers aiming to mitigate burden-shifting tendencies in alliances. Using a mixed-methods approach, I find that among the Nordic states, NATO membership appears to mitigate such tendencies, and that supranational fiscal rules, as well as national strategies and political economies, shape burden-sharing choices.