The Offset Policy Project is a long-term initiative by the Innovations for Peace and Development (IPD) Lab at The University of Texas at Austin.
Our goal is to collect, analyze, and present data on how European countries have structured their defense offset policies between 1990 and 2020. A defense offset is a contractual obligation that requires defense contractors to reinvest some portion of the contract value into the purchasing country’s economy. This project aims to collect data that will allow researchers to identify how variation in the structure of defense procurement and offset institutions influences their use and efficacy.
This resource provides one of the most comprehensive publicly available inventories of how states structure and manage their defense-industrial policy apparatuses.
Currently, the website features:
- An Interactive Map & Country List: A visual representation of European offset policies, allowing users to explore individual country regulations and their historical development.
- Policy Timeline: A chronological overview of offset policy changes across Europe, helping to identify trends, shifts, and regulatory evolutions.
- Detailed Methodology: A breakdown of our research framework, data collection methods, and coding criteria.
How We Collect Our Data
Our process typically requires roughly one semester of research per country, during which time each researcher engages in:
- Comprehensive archival and digital research: Using English and native-language sources, we consult government publications, defense industry reports, news databases, and archival tools like the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
- Multi-stage review and verification: Each data entry is double-checked by a secondary researcher for accuracy, followed by final approval and vetting by the project lead.
- Systematic documentation: Every coded year is supported by a document of sources that includes screenshots, excerpts, and persistent links.
- Standardized variable coding: We use a uniform spreadsheet structure with over a dozen variables, including:
- Existence of a Ministry of Defense (MoD) or a Ministry of Economy (MoE)
- Presence of formal offset policy or bans
- Mandatory offset thresholds and monetary limits
- Bureaucratic location of offset management (MoD vs. MoE)
- Names of responsible departments or agencies
The coding scheme distinguishes between documented years, where a source confirms a policy, and imputed years (where policy is inferred to remain unchanged).
This methodology is informed by political science literature on institutions and bureaucratic politics. Our core hypotheses explore how formal and informal offset institutions, and divergent bureaucratic interests, affect offset policy outcomes..
What Researchers Can Do with This Information
This project provides a wealth of data for scholars, policymakers, and defense analysts interested in understanding the strategic, economic, and technological impacts of offset agreements. Some key research applications include:
- Comparative analysis: Identify how different European countries approach offset regulation and how those approaches evolve over time.
- Institutional and policy design studies: Explore the relationship between bureaucratic structures and the development or enforcement of offset policies.
- Economic and strategic assessment: Evaluate the impact of offset frameworks on national defense capabilities, industrial development, and broader economic outcomes.
- Legal and compliance inquiries: Investigate how countries interpret, implement, and enforce offset-related regulations within different legal and institutional settings.
By mapping institutional design and policy evolution, our platform offers a foundational dataset for understanding how states approach one of the most complex, and often opaque, elements of international defense procurement.
Stay tuned as we continue to expand our database!
Access the website here: https://sites.google.com/view/theoffsetpolicyproject/home