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This study examines the effects of China's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on buying its state image abroad. We argue that regime survival has motivated China to use FDI to improve its state image and induce the world to accept China as a "good" country without democracy. Our analysis shows that while world public opinion becomes more favorable to China when its FDI share increases, even democratic countries remain less favorable toward this growing power. However, when China's FDI share crosses a higher threshold, democratic countries' unfavorable view toward China is compromised and the significant difference in favorability between democratic and nondemocratic countries is diminishing. China's FDI share has no significant effect on improving its state image in the Asia Pacific region, in particular—probably due to the memory of past wars with China and China's aggressive geopolitical strategy that focuses more on hard power competition. Our empirical results are robust in terms of their consistency with the governments' UN voting similarity with China.Related ArticlesÅberg, John H. S., and Derick Becker. 2020. "China as Exemplar: Justin Lin, New Structural Economics, and the Unorthodox Orthodoxy of the China Model." Politics & Policy 48 (5): 815‐835. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12376Asongu, Simplice A. 2016. "Sino‐African Relations: A Review and Reconciliation of Dominant Schools of Thought." Politics & Policy 44 (2): 351‐383. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12152Davis, G. Doug. 2011. "Regional Trade Agreements and Foreign Direct Investment." Politics & Policy 39 (3): 401‐419. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00296.x

What effects does participation in peacekeeping operations (PKO) have on the participating countries' civil–military resource allocation? Answering this question can widen our understanding of state motivations to contribute to the United Nations PKOs by incorporating the civil–military dynamic. We argue that contributing states can substitute part of their domestic military expenditures with external resources. Governments act as brokers between domestic military interests and international sources of rent, a process which we call civil–military resource substitution through international brokerage. By doing so, governments can (i) reduce part of the bottom-up demands for increased military spending (i.e., salaries and allowances) and (ii) outsource critical resources to meet military organizational priorities (i.e., training, weapons, perks for the military elite, and so on). Using cross-national statistical analysis, we find that the UN PKO contributing states allocate fewer resources to the defense sector than the non-contributing states, and higher troop-contributing states are likely to allocate fewer resources to the defense sector than the lower-contributing or non-contributing states. The implications point to a much wider role of the UN peacekeeping missions than what is previously understood and demonstrate their impacts beyond the host countries.

In this article, we assess the variation in civilian governments' defense spending as a function of civil-military relations. We present a novel explanation based on the military's presence in the political decision-making apparatus. We argue that the appointment of an active military officer in a key governmental position allows the government to make a more credible commitment to provide the military with adequate rents and thereby stabilizes civil-military relations. The appointment helps solve the commitment problem on the part of the government by reducing the coordination costs for the military to challenge the government more successfully in the event of the government's defection. Hence, the military's incentive to intervene in politics to prevent the government's monopoly over rents lessens markedly. Defense spending increases as a result because this arrangement requires the government to honor its promises to distribute increased rents among the military members of the winning coalition. Our theory predicts higher defense spending in cases where the military has a presence in the top-level policy-making positions within a civilian government. We find strong empirical evidence in support of our argument using data from 1984 to 2011. Civilian governments with a military presence in the cabinet's security-related portfolios experience up to a 20% increase in their defense spending on average. This study offers important insights into governments' motivation to appoint active-duty military officers in key policy-making positions and the effects of such appointments on civil-military resource allocation.