Institutional Structure and Soviet Defence Policy Change

Abstract

This article sets out to establish the extent to which changes in the institutional structure of Soviet security and defence policy influenced Soviet military-strategic policy in the 1980s. Institutional structure is defined as the nature of civil-military relations, which is measured along two dimensions: the degree of leadership control over the military, and the interrelationship between civilian and military participation in security and defence policy. Hypotheses are formulated which connect the nature of civil-military relations to military-strategic decisions as well as to their conversion into concrete measures. The empirical analysis of three decisions shows that the Soviet leaders sought to create a more defensive strategy by increasing centralized control over agenda-setting, policy design and decision-making. It did so by expanding the community of experts in military-strategic policy and reducing military participation in foreign and, to a lesser extent, arms control policy. It failed to institutionalize civilian participation and monitoring of the implementation of military-strategic decisions, apparently because it had a top-down perspective on the policy process. The general conclusion is that institutional change at the input side of the policy process is easier to establish than at the output side.