BUREAUCRATIC POLITICS AND CONGRESS' ROLE IN WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT

In 1975 Congress required that budgetary requests for selected defense programs be accompanied by a statement assessing their arms control effects. Implementation of this requirement has fallen far short of unqualified success, and several proposals for remedying its failures are now being discussed. If remedies are based on incomplete or faulty diagnoses of the requirement's failures, however, they could exacerbate its dysfunctional aspects. This article suggests that the requirement has been unsuccessful because of an inadequate appreciation both of the political dynamics of the bureaucratic process involved and of the objective problems of these arms control issues. The analysis presented here concentrates on the former and suggests that further legislative modifications to the requirement are unlikely to be fruitful.