Politicization, party politics and military missions deployment votes in France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom

This paper examines whether decisions at the core of international security politics, namely decisions on the deployment of military forces, have undergone a process of politicization. It is guided by two interrelated questions, namely a) whether deployment decisions have been politically contested and b) what kind of party-political cleavage has emerged in this process. We examine data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) as well as data that we gathered on parliamentary votes on deployment decisions in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. We find that military deployments have indeed been contested amongst political parties. Further and notwithstanding country-specific peculiarities, we find that the partypolitical cleavage is by and large captured by the left/right-axis.