Abstract
The accountability of the defence establishment in advanced industrial societies has always been a problem for legislatures and individuals concerned to discover the rationale of defence spending. This of course has grown as a problem with the advent of the Cold War and the use of nuclear technology. These twin developments have led the armed services and their respective bureaucratic agencies to become excessively concerned with security and the minimisation of public access to defence decision-making. Something of this fear was expressed by President Eisenhower in his final address when he spoke of the growth of a ‘military-industrial complex’, which was able to subvert the democratic process. This was at the end of the 1950s, but the perception that defence policy-making and expenditure decisions are not effectively controlled by the representatives of the people has been a continuing theme since that time. The distortion of the truth in the USA during the Vietnam War merely served to reinforce this fear. More recently, the ability of the defence establishment in Britain to present mis-information as truth to Parliament during the Falklands War, indicates that this problem is not confined to the USA.
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Notes
David Novick (ed.), Program Budgeting, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967) passim.
Aaron Wildavsky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process, 3rd edn. (Boston: Little Brown, 1979) p. 189.
David Howell, ‘Public Accountability: Trends and Parliamentary Impli-cations’, in L. R. Smith and D. C. Hague (eds), The Dilemma of Account-ability in Modern Government (London: Macmillan, 1971) p. 237.
A review of these changes can be found in Burton B. Mayer Jnr., ‘Evolution of PPB in DoD’, Armed Forces Comptroller, 18, 2 (Spring 1973) pp. 21–26.
See for example Lloyd Norman, ‘The Military Chiefs and Defense Policy: Is Anybody Listening?’, Army, 28 (April 1978) pp. 14–25.
See for example General Accounting Office, Models, Data and War: A Critique for the Foundation of Defense Analysis (Washington, 12 March 1980) ch. 3: ‘The Modern Design for Defence Decision’, pp. 32–48.
US Department of Defense, Summary of the DoD Planning, Programming and Budgeting System, undated, issued by DoD March 1980, p. 1.
Bob Gatty, ‘Mr. Carter, Congress and the Generals’, Army, 28, 12 (December 1978) pp. 28–31.
General David C. Jones, USAF, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Military Posture for FY 1982, p. iv.
Richard Burt, Defence Budgeting: the British and American Cases (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1975), p. 5.
Maurice Wright, ‘From planning to control: PESC in the 1970’s’, in Maurice Wright (ed.), Public Spending Decisions (London: Allen and Unwin, 1980) pp. 88–119.
On the role of the MOD see Michael Howard, The Central Organisation of Defence (London: RUSI, 1970)
David Greenwood, Budgeting for Defence (London: RUSI, 1972); and Burt, op. cit.
On the role of the Procurement Executive see Clive Pointing, ‘The Reorganisation of Defence Procurement’ (Paper presented to the Centennial Seminar, Department of External Studies, Oxford University, March 1980).
For a discussion of marginal/incremental conflicts see Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky, The Private Government of Public Money (Los Angeles: University of California, 1974), pp. 198–262.
John Bourn, ‘The planning, administration and control of defence expenditure’ (Paper presented to the Centennial Seminar, Department of External Studies, University of Oxford, March 1980), p. 7. Mr Bourn is Assistant Under Secretary (Programmes and Budget) MOD.
Michael Hobkirk, ‘The organisation of defence policy-making in the UK and USA’, in Lawrence Martin (ed.), The Management of Defence (London: Macmillan, 1976) pp. 12–13.
For this basic argument see: Sir Leo Pliatsky, ‘Paying for defence: the defence budget and the public expenditure system’ (Paper presented to the Centennial Seminar, Department of External Studies, University of Oxford, March 1980).
For an introduction to the process of policy rethink see Lawrence Martin, British Defence Policy: The Long Recessional (London: IISS, Adelphi Paper 61, 1969).
Lawrence Freedman, Britain and Nuclear Weapons (London: Macmillan, 1980), ch. 5: ‘Chevaline’, pp. 41–51.
Andrew Cox and Stephen Kirby, ‘Innovations in Legislative Oversight of Defence Policies in Britain and America’, The Parliamentarian, LXI, 4, (October 1980) pp. 215–229.
Stephen Kirby, ‘Congress and National Security’, The World Today, July–August 1981, pp. 270–276.
US General Accounting Office, Elmer B. Staats, ‘Assuring Program Accountability’ (Washington, 15 November 1979), p. 9.
John Ferejohn, Porkbarrel Politics (Stanford University Press, 1974) passim.
The point is that there were disagreements within the Procedure Committee about the correct role for Parliament. These views varied between those who thought that any reforms were a waste of time without electoral reform, through those who wanted Parliament to resemble Congress, to those who felt its role should be limited to scrutiny. For details see Ann Robinson, Parliament and Public Spending (London: Heinemann, 1978) pp. 42–53.
On the nature of PARs (Policy Analysis and Review) see Heclo and Wildavsky, op. cit., pp. 276–303. Under the Thatcher administration PARs have been abolished and replaced by internal reviews of efficiency and special studies undertaken by two special advisers to the government, Sir Derek Rayner and Paul Channon. On the MOD internal studies see Bourn, op. cit., pp. 15–18, and on the role of Rayner and Channon see Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Official paid post axed as Whitehall gets lesson in thrift’, The Guardian, 4 July 1980, p. 22.
An example of this being the provision of information on the Polaris replacement in the US rather than UK: see Tony Geraghty, ‘Thatcher to put British warhead in Trident’, Sunday Times, 6 July 1980, p. 1.
Peter Hennessy, ‘Mr. Mulley angers specialists over successor to Polaris’, The Times, 30 April 1979.
Masood Hyder, ‘Parliament and Defence Affairs: the defence subcommittee of the Expenditure Committee’, Public Administration, 55 (1977) pp. 59–78.
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© 1984 Stephen Kirby and Andrew Cox
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Kirby, S., Cox, A. (1984). Defence Budgeting and Accountability in Britain and America: Executive Innovation and Legislative Response in the 1970s. In: Shaw, M. (eds) War, State and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17414-0_9
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