| The debates over the power of the purse in the Revolutionary era show that the Founders valued democratic responsiveness over efficiency. Inefficiencies and failures occur not because federal budgeting is inherently political, but rather because the politics themselves are imperfect. To the Founders, a budget system driven by politics is a goal to be sought, not a problem to be solved. Moreover, even the most well-planned process reform cannot overcome flaws in the broader political sphere. In this thesis, a qualitative historiography of the political debates over missile defense programs from World War II through 1975 (including Nike-Zeus, Nike-X, Sentinel, and Safeguard) is used to illustrate Aaron Wildavsky's concept of incrementalism, which describes the post-war period as a classical era of budgeting where a small group of experts negotiated incremental changes from a well-established consensus position on an annual basis.;From the Second World War through 1960, Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) research and development was driven primarily by the imperatives of organizational politics in a Department of Defense suffering from interservice rivalries. Through 1967, the issue was caught up in Robert McNamara's efforts to centralize power in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Finally, in the era of Safeguard, from 1967 through 1975, the future of missile defense was primarily debated by Congress. Because Safeguard, the first ABM fielded by the United States, was cancelled just one day after achieving Full Operational Capability, it seems to showcase how short-term political pressures create obstacles to long-term budgeting in the Department of Defense. But Safeguard also led the Soviet Union to enter into the SALT arms control talks, which led to the ABM Treaty and the primacy of Mutually Assured Destruction, the preferred American strategy for the Cold War.;No responsible strategist would plan a process that proceeded quite like Safeguard and its predecessors, but the debates over deployment accomplished America's strategic goals, however indirectly. For that reason, the Safeguard story uniquely illuminates the interplay between the budget process and American democracy. Throughout the full period, incremental changes were negotiated over time. While there were inefficiencies, they were not the fault of the process. As Wildavsky says, the process is only an arena in which political battles are fought. If we seek more efficient government, it is politics, not process, that will have to change. |
