ABSTRACT
Few issues are more important to states’ security than their ability to acquire modern weaponry. Today, advanced industrial democracies possess three options for doing this. In principle, they can: autonomously produce their own armaments, import them from foreign suppliers, or collaborate with other states to co-produce common weapons. In this study, we examine the factors driving state decisions to either collaboratively or autonomously procure advanced weaponry. To this end, we analyse French and British decisions about whether or not to collaborate in the domain of combat aircraft. To preview our conclusion, we draw on the Varieties of Capitalism approach to argue that the underlying institutional structures of national political economies explain why otherwise similar states have enacted divergent policies. Within Étatist France, dense exchanges and close relationships within elite networks enable large defence contractors to veto government decisions that contravene their preferences. By way of contrast, Britain's liberal market economy empowers its government to impose its preference for collaborative projects onto aircraft manufacturers, even when the latter attempt to lobby in favour of promising national designs. Thus, what variety of capitalism a state practises determines whether governments or contractors occupy the metaphorical cockpit when it comes to making procurement policies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For valuable comments and suggestions we would like to thank: James Davis (University of St. Gallen), Klaus Dingwerth (University of Bremen), Eugene Gholz (University of Texas), Mark Thatcher (London School of Economics), Andrew James (University of Manchester), Ulrich Krotz (European University Institute) and Harvey Sapolsky (MIT). We would also like to thank RIPE's three anonymous reviewers and editorial board, who provided invaluable advice. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) and a seed grant of the Stiftung Deutsch-Amerikanische Wissenschaftsbeziehungen (SDAW).
Notes
8Statistics on individual European states’ collaborative endeavours can be found in Hébert (Citation2004).
9TNA CAB 148/32/47 DOP Committee, The Aircraft Programme, 23 June 1967.
14Hartley and Martin, Citation1993; Lorrell and Lowell, 1995.
16TNA T 225/2685, Committee to Redecide the Aircraft Industry, 1 February 1966; Soutou, Citation1996.
20Spain's CASA, for example, has seen its systems integration capabilities gradually atrophy since Spain has engaged heavily in collaborative projects; Molas-Gallart, Citation1992.
22During the Cold War, Dassault's success in exporting its lightweight Mirage fighters bore out the accuracy of its calculations. France succeeded in exporting 66 per cent of Mirage III/V aircraft, 63 per cent of Mirage F1 aircraft and 50 per cent of Mirage 2000 aircraft. Altogether, Dassault managed to export 1,717 of the 2,841 combat aircraft it produced between 1960 and 1995. By way of contrast, the three collaborative aircraft projects that the British were involved in, which led to the production of more specialized aircraft (the Jaguar, Tornado and Eurofighter), yielded a sum of only 387 aircraft exported, or 26 per cent of the total ordered; Simon, Citation1993; Jackson, Citation1994; Hébert, Citation1995; Evans, Citation1998; Lake and Crutch, Citation2000.
23As Kapstein (Citation1990) argues, most international relations scholars have implicitly drawn on these theoretical frameworks to account for defence-industrial policies. For example, Moravcsik (Citation1993) applied liberalism to explain collaborative outcomes, while Jones (Citation2007) explicitly applied realism. Prior to Jones’ work, Kapstein (Citation1991–92) implicitly employed realism to the same issue. Although Krotz (2007: 28–39) has applied constructivism to armaments collaboration, we have not pursued such an approach because our dependent variable – the state's collaborative decisions – favours approaches such as realism and liberalism, which are closer to rational choice theorizing.
28For our assessment of realism's predictive power, we have consciously restricted our focus to neo-realism. Because of its clear focus on states’ quest for security in an anarchic international system, neo-realism offers predictions that are both comparatively unambiguous and recognizable products of realist thought. By way of contrast, while the attempts by partisans of neoclassical realism to incorporate domestic variables into their frameworks may redress realism's shortcomings, it detracts from the clarity of its predictions.
33For our assessment of liberalism's analytic purchase, we restrict our focus to the interpretations of liberal theory offered by scholars who have examined defence-industrial issues from an explicitly liberal perspective (such as Moravcsik). However, in order for any liberal approach to account for occasions when the most powerful domestic stakeholders did not impose their preferences, it would be necessary to conceptually stretch liberal theory.
35Hall and Soskice, 33–36.
36In conducting our study, we considered building on prior research on interest group politics, which categorizes democratic political systems as pluralist or corporatist (e.g., Schmitter and Streeck, Citation1999; Lijphart, Citation1999, 171–84; Beyers et al., 2008). After conducting a plausibility probe, we discovered that firms interacted directly with government representatives, rather than using the intermediary associations central to theories of interest group politics. For this reason, we concluded that the VoC approach is more appropriate because it combines an institutional perspective and a firm-centred political economy (Hancké, Citation2009: 8). Likewise, we contemplated applying the conceptual framework of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) theory to explain procurement outcomes. The MIC theory contends that collusion between defence industries, politicians and military commanders leads to sub-optimal public policy outcomes (such as threat inflation and excessive defence spending). However, while the MIC theory offers a plausible explanation for why policy outcomes may run contrary to public interest, it cannot explain why these outcomes would diverge in states with similar resources.
43There is considerable debate within VoC literature on how many ideal types of market coordination there are. In their pioneering work, Hall and Soskice (Citation2001) postulated the existence of two forms of market organization – liberal market economies and coordinated market economies. Other scholars have since expressed the need for at least one other category to account for states (France, Italy, Spain and South Korea) where the government plays the predominant role in economic governance. For example, Schmidt (Citation2002) argues that an ideal type of ‘state capitalism’ should be added to those of LMEs and CMEs. Molina and Rhodes (Citation2010) prefer to refer to these economies as Mixed-Market Economies (MMEs) because, in addition to the government playing a large role, they also bear certain characteristics of both LMEs and CMEs. We prefer to use the terms, ‘statism’ or étatism, suggested by Shonfield (Citation1965) to describe this form of economic organization.
78TNA T 225/2685, Committee to Redecide the Aircraft Industry, 1 February 1966.
79TNA PREM 15/1290, Extract from Meeting PM/Pompidou, 22 May 1972.
81TNA AIR 20/10576 ASR 343 – Historic Diary; TNA DSIR 23/33256, Royal Aircraft Establishment, The Cost and Cost/Effectiveness of the Buccaneer 2 and 2*, July 1965.
83TNA PREM 13/1308, P. Reilly, Anglo-French Aircraft Collaboration, 24 January 1967; Evans, Citation1998: 1–35; Gardner, Citation2006: 147–217.
86Déplante, 1985: 182; Bodemer and Laguier, 1996: 150.
90TNA CAB 148/32/47, Cabinet-DOP Committee, The Aircraft Programme, 23 June 1967.
91Although the Mirage G's existence motivated France's withdrawal from the AFVG, Dassault and the DMA eventually supplanted it with a smaller and more conventional (national) aircraft, the Mirage F1 (Jackson, Citation1994: 77–78). Frustrated with this outcome, France's Air Force's embittered Chief of Staff reflected that procurement ‘was more often than not motivated by the desire to create and support an important industry rather than concern for the operational value of weaponry’ (Paul Stehlin, cited in Vadepied, 2000: 298–9).
93Breguet's acquisition by financial speculators liquidating their holdings in Indochina prevented the company from adequately investing in human and material capital. By 1965, Breguet possessed a workforce half as large as Dassault's (4,000 versus 8,000) and was saddled with aging equipment. See Lert, Citation2006: 5; de Narbonne, Citation2006: 50–5; Butler, 2006: 173–5.
102TNA PREM 13/1308, P. Reilly, Anglo-French Aircraft Collaboration, 24 January 1967.
106Ultimately, 192 Jaguars were exported to four states, while 457 Mirage F1s were sold to 10 clients. BAC negotiated all four Jaguar contracts in the face of stiff French opposition. See Evans, Citation1998: 101; Gardner, Citation2006: 217; TNA DEFE 11/653, I.S. McDonald, Director of Sales to Hd/DS13, 28 January 1974; TNA CAB 148/121, DOP Committee, The Supply of Arms to Egypt, 13 September 1972.
108TNA FCO 46/178, Military Aircraft Industrial Potential: Defence and Foreign Policy Considerations, 22 September 1967.
109TNA PREM 15/1374, Solly Zuckerman to Prime Minister, The MRCA, 8 July 1970.
114TNA PREM 15/1374, Burke Trend to Prime Minister, The MRCA, 28 July 1971; House of Commons, Commons Written Answers, 20 January 1993; Lorell and Lowell, Citation1995: 14.
118TNA DEFE 72/52, Defence Equipment Policy Committee, 9 June 1976.
121Interview with François Heisbourg, Paris, 13 July 2004; Guisnel, 1991: 214.
122Both Emile Blanc and Serge Dassault were graduates of the École Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l’Aéronautique. Moreover, as with many other DGA officials, Blanc's stellar career within the DGA was followed by his exercising direct managerial responsibility over the industries that he had formerly protected. In Blanc's case, he served as managing director of Snecma, France's state-owned jet engine producers, from 1986 to 1989 (Chambost, Citation2007: 63–73).
124West Germany proposed adopting a compromise weight specification of 9,500 kg as opposed to France's demand for 8,500 kg and the UK's insistence on 11,000 kg (Harkins, Citation1997: 13). France's would-be partners also acceded (reluctantly on West Germany's part) to the DGA's demand that Dassault be given prime contractor status (Schwartzbrod, Citation1992: 137–41).
126After lengthy negotiations, Blanc asked Defense Minister Charles Hernu on 2 August 1985 for permission to withdraw from the Eurofighter (Chambost, Citation2007: 79–80). Confident in Blanc's professional judgement, Hernu acceded (Interview with François Heisbourg, Paris, 13 July 2004).
132Thatcher (Citation2010) began this process by demonstrating the value of the VoC theory in analysing network industries, where the government is a significant actor, but where national security considerations are absent.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Marc R. DeVore
Marc R. DeVore is a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews (United Kingdom). His research interests include security studies, comparative political economy and violent non-state actors.
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