Bringing Politics Back in: Defense Policy and the Theoretical Study of Institutions and Processes

Abstract

In 1960, Morris Janowitz argued publication of Samuel Huntington's landmark study, The Soldier and State, represented the first time since Alexis de Tocqueville American military institutions were being analyzed as an aspect of American political process (1960; 5). A decade later, Robert Miewald criticized scholars in public administration their neglect of military. It is now obvious, he wrote, that few students of public administration have been moved to heed periodic cries military organization be considered an integral part of their field of study. Despite importance of military today, more scholarly care seems to have been lavished on mosquito abatement districts (1970; 129). A more recent assessment argued there were not adequate successors to 1960s classics in defense scholarship, nor was there an authoritative scholarly analysis of U.S. defense buildup in 1980s (Walt, 1991; 227). A recent review of Allison's innovative treatment of Cuban Missile Crisis noted for courses dealing with bureaucracy and foreign policy there are few alternatives to Essence of Decision (Bendor and Hammond, 1992; 301), first parts of which were published a quarter-century ago. We find these observations to be indicative of a long-standing neglect - by both political scientists and defense analysts - of connection between military and study of American political institutions. Although intellectual landscape is not as barren as these critics charge,(1) theoretical and practical literatures on public administration and American institutions typically avoid study of defense policy and military organizations. Few political scientists trained in either American institutions or policy studies focus on defense as their substantive area, leaving field to those trained in defense policy and international relations, who in turn have neglected domestic political aspects of security policy (Nye and Lynn-Jones, 1988; Welch, 1992) despite recognition of domestic-international linkages in other policy areas (Davis, 1993; Chubb, 1983, 1989). Scholars have noted existence of this gap, but our goal in this article is to explain why gap exists and illustrate how it might be bridged. In our view, lack of engagement stems from two assumptions about military policy which discourage scholars from looking at how politics - which we take to mean competition between actors and institutions over control of policy and goals, rather than pork barrel, bureaucratic, or electoral politics - affects defense issues. First, most studies of American politics assume defense and civilian policies are so different they belong in separate fields. Second, most defense analysts adopt normative assumption defense policy making should be above politics. As a result, scholars in both fields avoid thinking about connections between political structures, political relationships, and defense policy outputs. We address these issues and then show effort to depoliticize defense policy is actually part of a broader debate in public administration and public policy studies: striking proper balance between expertise (which is politically neutral) and accountability to elected officials. In virtually every domestic policy arena, as in study of defense policy, analysts bemoan intervention of politics in definition, administration, and evaluation of public policy. Our effort to find some common ground between defense policy and study of institutions led us to recent developments in what is commonly referred to as new economics of organization. Its framework of principals, agents, and transaction costs associated with bringing about compliance has been applied to a number of domestic policy areas (Moe, 1984, 1989; McCubbins, 1985; Weingast, 1984; Wood and Waterman, 1991; Woolley, 1993) but has not yet been used to investigate questions about defense policy. …