Overview

What role do economic and business interests play in decisions about U.S. weapons systems? Many scholars argue that the U.S. federal government is an autonomous entity, not significantly influenced by social and economic processes outside of state organizations. In this first study to examine highly disaggregated military expenditures, John Boies demonstrates otherwise. In his study of spending between 1962 and 1987 on nine categories of procurement and three kinds of aggregate measures, Boies finds that military spending of many types responds to the profits of the largest defense contractors, the mobilization of right-wing business elites, and the growing dependency of U.S. firms on income from investments abroad. Analyzing complex data, Boies shows how the state is influenced by special interest and elite political action, in this case by the New Right in the form of the Committee on the Present Danger, and by institutionalized responses to the changing foreign interests of U.S.-based corporations. The unique relationships major defense contractors have with the U.S. military ensures that their voices are strong in the Pentagon. Even what is portrayed by sociologists and political scientists as the most autonomous organ of the national state--the military--is strongly influenced by political and economic forces outside the state. The special relationship between the state and U.S. business will dramatically impede the reallocation of resources away from the military to other uses during the post-Cold War era.

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9780813520827

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JOHN L. BOIES is a sociologist at Texas AM University.

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