A Functional Analysis of Defense Department Decision-Making in the McNamara Administration

Abstract

In 1961 the Defense Department, under a new Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, began a major management revolution, based on a set of methods and techniques which came to be called a programming, planning, and budgeting system (PPBS). Few, if any, of the techniques were new. Their revolutionary impact depended upon (1) the high degree of development or sophistication to which some of them (e.g., cost and program analysis) had been driven, and (2) the relatively high degree of integration achieved in the new “system,” so that, for example, decisions about current operations can be taken in the light of their effect on programs four or five years in the future, and decisions about future goals can be taken with their implications for present operations specified.In August, 1965, President Johnson announced his plans to develop comparable management systems in other executive departments. The progress of this effort has been uneven. But it is clear that PPBS is going to be with us for a while. This article is an attempt to assess its effect on the bureaucratic politics of the Defense Department.