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Defence budgeting and accountability: Britain and the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Stephen Kirby  and
Andrew Cox
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Extract

Post-war budgeting for defence in Britain and the United States has become highly complex and politically contentious both for successive administrations and for Congress and Parliament. In the 1950s and 1960s new methods of budgeting were introduced by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) which held out the prospect both of more efficient management of defence programmes and of greater accountability for defence spending to the respective legislatures. Paradoxically, these same methods presented problems to Congress and Parliament and to their defence and financial committees, which were unable to comprehend the new budget techniques. This and other problems produced pressure in the 1970s, in both countries, for the creation of new committees for the scrutiny of defence and other public spending matters. This paper will examine briefly the developments in defence budgeting in Britain and America and assess the advantages they were purported to offer, especially those that relate to defence accountability. It will then examine the responses of Congress and Parliament to them and assess the extent to which new committees, created in the 1970s, were able to draw upon those budget techniques in a way that provided greater accountability of defence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 1983 , pp. 173 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1983

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References

1. See Novik, David (ed.), Program Budgeting, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1916), passim.Google Scholar

2. Wildavsky, Aaron, The Politics of the Budgetary Process, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1979), p. 189.Google Scholar

3. Howell, David, ‘Public Accountability: Trends and Parliamentary Implications’, in Smith, L. R. and Hague, D. C. (eds.), The Dilemma of Accountability in Modern Government (London, 1971), p. 237.Google Scholar

4. Ibid. p. 236.

5. See Burton B. Mayer, Jnr., ‘Evolution of PPB in DoD\Armed Forces Comptroller, 18, (Spring, 1973), pp. 21–6.

6. See for example General Accounting Office, Models, Data and War: A Critique for the Foundation of Defense Analysis (Washington, 12 March 1980) chapter 3, ‘The Modern Design for Defense Decision’, pp. 32–48.

7. US Department of Defense, Summary of the DoD Planning, Programing and Budgeting System, (undated, issued March 1980), p. 1.

8. Interview with Clyde O. Glaister, Director of Program and Financial Control, DoD, 1 April 1980.

9. General David C. Jones, USAF, Chairman of JCS, United States Military Posturefor FY1982, p. iv.

10. Interview, DoD, April 1980.

11. The outstanding example is the AV-8B aircraft, see pp. 181–2 below.

12. See Michael Howard, The Central Organisation of Defence, (London, RUSI, 1970); David Greenwood, Budgeting for Defence, (London, RUSI, 1972); Richard Burt, Defence Budgeting: the British and American Cases, (London, IISS, 1976).

13. Greenwood, op. cit. pp. 39–40.

14. Bourn, John, ‘The Planning, Administration and Contro l of Defence Expenditure’, (Paper presented to the Centennial Seminar, Department of External Studies, University of Oxford, March 1980), p. 7.Google Scholar

15. Greenwood, op. cit. pp. 41—2.

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18. Burt, op. cit. pp. 32–4.

19. ”See for example Lawrence Martin, British Defence Policy: The Long Recessional, (London, USS, 1969).

20. Pliatsky, op. cit. p. 11.

21. On the introduction of cash limits see Maurice Wright, ‘From Planning to Control: PESC in the 1970s’, in Wright, Maurice, (ed.), Public Spending Decisions (London, 1980), pp. 88–119.Google Scholar

22. On this problem see, Eighth Report from the Expenditure Committee: Defence Expenditure, (Session 1977/8, H.C. 600-i), paras. 6–15 and Minutes of Evidence, pp. 1–50.

23. Bourn, op. cit. pp. 4–7.

24. Ibid. p. 7.

25. Greenwood, op. cit. pp. 92–4.

26. Fulton Committee Report on the Civil Service, Vol. 1, para. 281.

27. See for example Committee on the Budget, US House of Representatives, Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974: Legislative History, (Washington, January 1979), for a list and a review of some of these reports.

28. Lawrence Freedman, Britain and Nuclear Weapons (London, 1980), chapter 5, ‘Chevaline’, pp. 41–51,

29. Andrew Cox and Stephen Kirby, ‘Innovations in Legislative Oversight of Defence Policies in Britain and America’, The Parliamentarian, Ixi (1980), pp. 215–29.

30. See ‘Editorial’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, 25 May 1981, p. 18, for comment on the USAF's attempts to get funding for the B-l bomber during the Carter presidency.

31. Cooper, Bert H., V/STOL Aircraft Development, (Washington, Congressional Research Service, 13 March 1979)Google Scholar, passim.

32. Ibid. p. 7.

33. The full titles of these institutions are; The General Accounting Office (GAO), The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), The Congressional Research Service (CRS), and the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).

34. Staats, Elmer B., ‘Ensuring Program Accountability’, (Washington, GAO, 15 November 1979), p. 9.Google Scholar

35. This was confirmed by several interviews with HAS C staff members, one of whom described the CBO defence staff as ‘21 year old Vasser graduates’.

36. Quoted in Wildavsky, op. cit. p. 258.

37. Interview with Jud White, Senior Defense Analyst (Europe), HASC, 21 March 1980.

38. See Gross, George, The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974: A General Explanation, (Washington, House Budget Committee Print, Febrauary, 1975)Google Scholar, passim, but especially p. 6 on the relationship between the Budget Committees and other committees.

39. See John Freejohn, Porkbarrel Politics (Stanford, 1974), passim.

40. For details see Robinson, Ann, Parliament and Public Spending (London, 1978), pp. 42–53.Google Scholar

41. Ibid. pp. 26–9.

42. See Heclo and Wildavsky op. cit. for PARs. The Thatcher government has replaced PARs with efficiency studies carried out by Sir Derek Rayner and Paul Channon. For the effect on Mo D see Bourn, op. cit. pp. 15–18.

43. An example of this is the suppression in the UK of information on the Polaris replacement which i s freely available in the USA. See Tony Geraghty, Thatcher to put British Warhead on Polaris’, Sunday Times, (6 July 1980), p. 1.

44. Robinson, op. cit. pp. 54–7 The point was confirmed in interviews with parliamentary clerks and with James Boyden; Chairman of SCO E between 1974 and 1979.

45. Peter Hennessy, ‘Mr. Mulley Angers Specialists over Successor to Polaris’, The Times, (30 April 1979).

46. Masood Hyder, ‘Parliament and Defence Affairs: the Defence Sub-Committee of the Expenditure Committee’, Public Administration, 55 (1977), pp. 59–78.

47. For further details see Cox and Kirby, op. cit.

48. First Report from the Defence Committee: Sub-Committees, (HMSO, HC. 455, 1979/80).