Use It or Lose It: The Political Economy of Counterinsurgency Strategy

Abstract

Regular budget cycles and annual evaluations of bureaucratic funding have created a “use-it-or-lose-it” atmosphere in agencies throughout the American government, resulting in large expenditures in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year. We show that these spending patterns apply in a least likely case: junior officers in a war zone, and that indiscriminate fourth-quarter expenditures are correlated with increases in insurgent violence. Using reconstruction data from the war in Iraq, this article shows that the tendency to overspend at the end of the fiscal year is both pervasive and detrimental to security objectives. By combining extensive interview work with econometric analysis, this article offers new insights into the politics of war, civil–military relations, and postconflict reconstruction and suggests that these pathologies may have a substantive, negative impact on a government’s ability to effectively wage counterinsurgency operations.