UNITED STATES DEFENSE POLICY-MAKING: COMPARATIVE THEORIES OF BUDGETARY POLITICS

Taking U.S. defense policy-making as the dependent variable, this dissertation derives and empirically tests a variety of policy-making models within a budgetary framework in order to infer conclusions about the conceptual parameters of theories which best explain U.S. defense budgeting.; Explanation and prediction of U.S. defense budgetary policy is facilitated by application of alternative but complementary models.; Representing a range of theories, these models are structured in terms of two conceptual parameters: (1) the models assume a unitary or a collective policy-making entity, (2) the models assume that the causal locus lies primarily internal or external to the budgetary process.; Representing theories which assume policy-making to be a function of politicized policy processes among many policy actors are two models. Incrementalism assumes that policies represent minimal resultants of a process structured by a system of vertically cooperative roles interacting within a regime of benign rules. On the other hand, the Organizational Rivalry model assumes that because organizations are motivated by operationalizable and parochial concern for policy and resource autonomy, policy-making is primarily shaped by the inter-organizational rivalry and competition among agencies sharing policy space or resource parent.; On the other hand, arms race and environmental models assume that defense policies reflect the coherent decisions of a unitary (or unified) actor in response to factors external to the defense budget process.; Empirical tests of the models against budget data for the 1945-1980 period support the following conclusions: (1) incrementalist theory is powerful for explanation and prediction of real budget maintenance outcomes; (2) programmatic budget outcomes, however, are best explained by politicized policy process models (especially the Organizational Rivalry model); (3) the plausibility of a linkage model is supported. Two major conclusions follow from these results: (1) U.S. defense budgeting is better explained by examination of internal, organizationally-based politics among the services than by examination of rational policies designed to counterpose strategic issues. The proposition that foreign policy (even defense policy) may be more influenced by domestic than international factors is empirically substantiated. (2) A decision-making theory (organizational rivalry) is rigorously specified and empirically substantiated.