Defence capability in the UK since 2010: explaining change in procurement practices
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Defence capability in the UK since 2010: explaining change in procurement practices Benoit Giry1 · Andy Smith2
© Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract Arms procurement highlights tensions within British industrial policy. Once seen as an economic sanctuary to be preserved in the name of ‘strategy’, in the 1980s, it became a symbol of neoliberalization. However, how can contemporary procurement in the UK be characterized? To answer this question, this article analyses ‘political work’ carried out by politicians, bureaucrats and military officers within the MoD and DE&S, the state agency in charge of defence equipment and support since 2006. Beyond the protectionist/liberalized dichotomy, our documentary, interview and lexical analysis reveals the development of a new policy frame that we label ‘value management’. We first show how the issue of procurement has been reproblematized around the term ‘capability’ to provide a new set of regulatory organizing principles and social relations. The way in which this frame has been equipped with managerial and policy instruments is then analysed. Finally, we show how this ‘problem’ and these instruments have been legitimized in a way that transcends the polar opposites of neoliberal cost-cutting and interventionist industrial policy. Overall, we conclude that ‘value management’ is currently proposing the basis for a new British defence consensus. Keywords Defence · Procurement · Equipment support · Industrial policy · Neoliberalism
* Andy Smith [email protected] Benoit Giry benoit.giry@sciencespo‑rennes.fr 1
ARENE, Institute of Political Studies, Sciences-Po Rennes, 8 Boulevard de la Duchesse Anne, 35000 Rennes, France
2
Centre Emile Durkheim, Sciences-Po Bordeaux, 11 allée Ausone, 33670 Pessac, France
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B. Giry, A. Smith
Introduction The procurement of defence equipment is an important yet curious political issue. The subject frequently makes the headlines, notably because of its sheer cost, its links to employment, and the lives of servicemen and women put at risk when it goes wrong. These issues are all the more salient in the United Kingdom (UK) where controversy over the production and acquisition of defence equipment has been frequent since the end of the ‘domestic defence consensus’ in the 1980s (Dorman 2002, p. 3). Indeed, over the last four decades this country’s relatively large defence equipment budget has been scrutinized vigorously in Parliament, by political parties, interested companies, a wide range of ‘experts’ and the media. More precisely, as part 1 of this piece briefly recalls, since 1945 the actual availability of British defence equipment has regularly been controversial and often publicly so. This makes equipment availability highly relevant for the scientific observation of political activity. However, since 2010, the governmental policy upon which such availability largely depends—’equipment support’—has given rise to virtually no academic publications.1 More perplexingly still, despite the enormous sums of
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