Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1984

Published In

The Political Economy: Readings In The Politics And Economics Of American Public Policy

Abstract

Few areas of public policy are more fraught with consequences, both globally and domestically, than U.S. weapons procurement. In this essay, James R. Kurth begins by distinguishing four sorts of explanations for the pattern of that procurement that are offered by conventional literature—strategic, bureaucratic, democratic, and economic explanations—then tests these explanations against the major weapons decisions of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. He develops in particular detail a variant on the industry-specific sort of economic explanation, featuring in his own construction "follow-on" and "bail-out" imperatives for government support of weapons producers. While this revised economic explanation illuminates many of the decisions in the procurement process, however, Kurth find it distinctly limited as a general theory of that process. It does not, for example, easily lit the U. S. decision to launch and continue with a major MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles) missile program, where more explicitly strategic and bureaucratic explanations seem more plausible. Kurth concludes that no single available theory captures the complexity of the procurement process, and counsels explanatory eclecticism in understanding the mysteries of weapons development.

Published By

M. E. Sharpe

Editor(s)

T. Ferguson and J. Rogers

Comments

This material was originally published in The Political Economy: Readings in the Politics and Economics of American Public Policy edited by Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, and has been reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis. For permission to reuse this material, please visit the publisher's website.

Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear.

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