From Internalization to Externalization: The Impact of Changing State-Societal Relations on US Foreign Policy

Whether or not the United States provides the specific leadership goods required to maintain a liberal international order depends, among other factors, on social relationships in American domestic politics. This chapter argues that domestic structures largely determine if and what kind of hegemony the United States provides to international relations. Most importantly, domestic factors shape the American response to the challenge of international interdependence.

A hegemonic power can either internalize and absorb costs of sensibility and vulnerability interdependence or it can deflect, or at least delay, cost internalization and thereby externalize interdependence costs. The Trump administration pursues an externalization type of hegemony that cuts out several of the key elements of international liberalism and burdens other states with the costs of public good provisions in international affairs.

How can one explain this change of hegemony from previous US administrations? The chapter argues that the Trump administration is both, a response to changing social relationships in domestic politics and its driver. It identifies the following sources of changing state-society relationships: first, increasing fragmentation and polarization intensify social cleavages. Second, a state increasingly weakened by separation of power arrangements is exposed to a strong society that effectively pursues private interests by claiming them to be public ones. And, third, a new dominating coalition in the Republican Party replaced the old foreign policy establishment and drives an agenda of cost externalization. The chapter concludes that, taken together, these domestic factors transform American hegemony, where the previous practice of internalizing interdependence costs has changed to one of externalizing them.

in: Florian Böller, Welf Werner (eds) (2021): Hegemonic Transition. Global Economic and Security Orders in the Age of Trump, Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 21-42. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-74505-9_2

Collective Action Problems in NATO

NATO is a rich case for collective action problems in international relations. Its formation, management, evolution and transformation presented its members with significant commitment problems of providing for, and contributing to, the production of public goods. However, NATO proofed to be highly inventive in both overcoming, and creatively using opportunities of, group member heterogeneity. The organization developed an enormously rich repertoire of both hardware and software solutions to overcome commitment and collective action problems. These arrangement ate the primary explanation for why NATO persists and is able to adjust to changing international conditions.

In: Sebastian Meyer (ed.) (2023): Research Handbook on NATO. Cheltenham, UK: Edgar Elgar, pp. 191-206.

Edgar Elgar Publ.

From Internalization to Externalization: The Impact of Changing State-Societal Relations on US Foreign Policy

Whether or not the United States provides the specific leadership goods required to maintain a liberal international order depends, among other factors, on social relationships in American domestic politics. This chapter argues that domestic structures largely determine if and what kind of hegemony the United States provides to international relations. Most importantly, domestic factors shape the American response to the challenge of international interdependence.

A hegemonic power can either internalize and absorb costs of sensibility and vulnerability interdependence or it can deflect, or at least delay, cost internalization and thereby externalize interdependence costs. The Trump administration pursues an externalization type of hegemony that cuts out several of the key elements of international liberalism and burdens other states with the costs of public good provisions in international affairs.

How can one explain this change of hegemony from previous US administrations? The chapter argues that the Trump administration is both, a response to changing social relationships in domestic politics and its driver. It identifies the following sources of changing state-society relationships: first, increasing fragmentation and polarization intensify social cleavages. Second, a state increasingly weakened by separation of power arrangements is exposed to a strong society that effectively pursues private interests by claiming them to be public ones. And, third, a new dominating coalition in the Republican Party replaced the old foreign policy establishment and drives an agenda of cost externalization. The chapter concludes that, taken together, these domestic factors transform American hegemony, where the previous practice of internalizing interdependence costs has changed to one of externalizing them.

Von Internalisierung zu Externalisierung: Die Auswirkungen domestischer Strukturen auf die US-Außenpolitik und die liberale Hegemonie, in: Florian Böller, Welf Werner (Hrsg.) (2023): Hegemonial Wandel, Cham: Springer, doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-35003-0_2

Heterogeneity vs. Standardization. The History of NATO burden sharing reconsidered.

This working paper „Aus der Forschung“ no. 1 (2024) reviews the history of burden sharing in NATO. It responds to the political question whether or not NATO-member states comply with the so-called defense investment pledge (DIP) of 2014. The DIP required to spend three percent of the GDP on defense. This working paper seeks to answer the question how NATO invented burden sharing and developed it by practice over time. It demonstrates that it provide to be impossible to expect member states to make the same contribution to NATO’s collective defense. Instead, they contributed state-specific resources. This way, NATO would capitalize on the broad heterogeneity of its members by tapping their respective strengths. Justice conceptualized as meeting a common measure of burden sharing applied to all member states was considered both, unachievable and undesirable as it conflicted with heterogeneity. NATO’s history of burden sharing was therefore a history of diffuse rather than specific reciprocity.

The DIP overturned these principles of NATO burden sharing because for the first time a common measure – three percent of GDP – replaced member state specific contributions. Heterogeneity gave way to standardization. This way, collective defense burdens – most importantly the threat of being the territory on which war is expected to be fought – are no longer considered a burden.

The working paper served as a draft for the article in Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 32 (2) 2025 commemorating the late Prof. Dr. Helga Haftendorn.

Aus der Forschung 1/2024 (German only)

Indivisible Security by Nuclear Sharing in an Asymmetrical NATO

NATO institutionalized its core principle indivisible security between allies by developing agreements and cooperative practices. In the 1950s and 1960s the US and its allies agreed on and developed a multitude of arrangements to institutionalize nuclear sharing. Sharing includes deployment of nuclear warheads in Europe as well as the daily cooperation of military planning, preparation, and training for collective defence. A combination of hardware and software reassures allies that American nuclear deterrence extends to all NATO allies.

This paper has been published in SIRIUS. Zeitschrift für Strategische Studien, 2025, 9 (1-2) doi: 10.1515/sirius-2025-2010 (German only)

Asymmetric Interdependence of Burden Sharing in the North Atlantic Alliance

This paper is an interdependence theory-based analysis of burden-sharing in NATO. It demonstrates how the recent political focus on the two or five percent of GDP defense expenditure goals deviate from the historically grown more complex burden-sharing institution and process. The previous efficacy of defense and security cooperation gives way to the goal of distributive justice. Diffuse reciprocity is replaced by transactional specific reciprocity among allies. Member specific characteristics of the heterogeneously composed NATO alliance fade out in favor of harmonization of burden-sharing standards. To the extent this dynamic increases sensitivity or even vulnerability interdependence by changing entanglement and/or abandonment of allies it can weaken alliance cohesion.

This paper is part of a symposium commemorating Prof. Dr. Helga Haftendorn

Published in: Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, 32 (2), pp. 94-116 (in German), doi: 10.5771/0946-7165-2025-2-94

For citizens and member states alike, the European Union is fundamentally an ambivalent government. It offers important benefits which explain why Europe integrated in the first place. However, increasingly the EU penetrates member states and infringes on their sovereignty. When Europe hits home, member state governments try to resist and adapt as less as possible. This resistance against further integration inhibits European cohesion. The EU therefore needs to manage a growing variable geometry. Still, this chapter demonstrates how Europeanization deeply transforms member states and societies even though it fails to achieve higher convergence. Thus, the European Union is characterized by a social and political dynamic alternating between integration and Europeanization that unlikely leads to unity.

Aus der Forschung

Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy under President Donald Trump

This article describes how the public’s huge discontent with neoliberal reforms led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. These reforms originated in the 1970s and generated initial successes. The economy overcame the mounting problem of stagflation and the United States returned to economic growth. In addition, cultural change from materialism to post-material values initially supported the neoliberal reforms. However, these early successes proved to be overly expensive. The social inequality of society grew substantially. Broad sections of the American society were exposed to high risks against which they were not effectively protected. The financial crisis of 2008 revealed the full misery and led to heightened disillusionment, uncertainty, and broad discontent with neoliberalism.

Donald Trump promised his voters to eliminate these calamities. However, rather than initiating domestic reforms of neoliberalism he focused his plans on foreign affairs. He uses American structural powers in international affairs in order to reduce the societies’ exposure to risk and to alleviate the burden globalization allegedly put on the American people. This is in essence Trump’s reconfiguration of neoliberalism.

The article further shows that under existing conditions of high levels of interdependence international relations consist of irreconcilable conflicts among desirable foreign policy goals. Pursuing some goals of political priority must necessarily lead to some disadvantages in pursuing conflicting goals. The article uses the example of U.S. foreign policy to demonstrate that the willingness of a society to accept risks and/or to adjust to pressures deriving from international interdependence is the key domestic driving force for the making of foreign policy.

The article (available in German language only) can be downloaded here.

How Trump’s Personalty shapes U.S. Foreign Policies

This study is a brief excerpt from a larger conference paper on the domestic sources of U.S. foreign policy and hegemony. It shows how the personality of Donald Trump affects U.S. foreign policy and prevents international cooperation as well as possible successes.

Download the study here.

On “How Democracies Die”

The United States under the Trump presidency along with other democracies led by authoritarian leaders raise concerns that even consolidated democracies do not live forever. This article starts with a recently published book titled “how democracies die” and demonstrates how seemingly stable democratic systems might erode, how such processes develop and how erosion might be stopped.

Moreover, the article argues that not only authoritarian leaders such as Donald Trump jeopardize democracy. Some studies also point to the corrosive effects of wealthy elites who are in a much better position of pursuing their interests than ordinary citizens. These analyses raise doubts about democracy as government of for and by the people.

The article starts with the scholarly debate on the book “how democracies die.” It continues describing what other deficiencies impair American politics. Finally, it evaluates the findings in light of democratic theory. It uses an interdisciplinary perspective by invoking insights from comparative democracy research, international relations, economics and development research.

The full text (in German only) is published in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift Vol. 60, No 2, 2019.