Domestic politics and military aid to Ukraine

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This session of Bayesian Inference for Qualitative Evidence features a presentation by postdoctoral researchers Marius Ghincea (ETH Zurich) and Wolfgang Minatti (Leuphana University).

Why have France and Germany adopted divergent – and shifting – policies on disclosing their military aid to Ukraine? We argue that domestic politics, not international signaling or political culture, best explains this puzzle. We theorise that leaders use transparency as a legitimation tool to manage audience costs when their policy preferences diverge from a hawkish public. Conversely, when leader and public preferences align, policymakers revert to strategic ambiguity. Using a most-similar comparison of France and Germany, employing qualitative Bayesian reasoning, we find strong support for our argument. Germany shifted to transparency under Chancellor Scholz following domestic pressure, a policy reversed by Chancellor Merz once preferences realigned. France maintained secrecy while elite and public opinion converged, only partially disclosing aid after domestic criticism. Our findings highlight domestic legitimation strategies in shaping foreign policy secrecy and contribute to the literature on secrecy in shaping foreign policy secrecy and contribute to the literature on secrecy in foreign policy and on military assistance to Ukraine.

Speakers:

Dr. Marius Ghincea is a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Hs research agenda is situated at the intersection of international relations and European studies, with a focus on how the European Union’s foreign and security policy is shaped by the dynamic interplay between external geopolitical pressures and internal political contestation within member states.

Dr. Wolfgang Minatti is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leuphana University, Germany. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His research focuses on the legitimation of governance in international politics with a particular focus on violent non-state actors in civil wars. Furthermore, he works on fieldwork methodology and the ethics of conducting qualitative research. He conducted extensive fieldwork in Colombia where he worked with rebel ex-combatants and rural peasants.

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