Base Politics ─ Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas

Cooley (political science, Barnard College and Columbia U.'s School of International and Public Affairs) explores the politics of bilateral US military basing agreements with other countries. His argument assumes that host country leaders will use basing agreements and negotiations over basing agreements to further their political survival, which is either aided by the benefits from hosting bases, whether those are security, economic aid, or such intangibles as prestige, or endangered because of public disapproval or some other contingency. The level of political dependence of the base-host elites on the sending country (i.e. the US) also helps determine the ability and willingness of those elites to press for contractual terms more favorable to them. Finally, institutional structures heavily influence contractual credibility of the host country. Thus authoritarian regimes will use agreements to extract private goods to further regime survival, but will contest the agreements if the political costs begin to outweigh the private goods; newly democratizing regimes will politicize basing contracts signed before democratic transition, but will only abrogate them if not dependent on the sending power; and consolidated democracies will tend to honor basing agreements regardless of policy differences with the sending power and regardless of public opinion, social mobilization, or changes in the international security environment. The above hypothesis is tested against case studies of US basing agreements in the Azores/Portugal, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)