Description
Defence and security reviews are important public manifestations of British grand strategy. Commentary on these reviews overwhelmingly focuses on the preparation and content of outcome documents; but pays very little attention to implementation. The structures of accountability for many reviews are opaque. Personnel changes, compounded by shifting policy agenda and bureaucratic reorganizations, make tracing the extent and efficiency of implementation difficult. This paper seeks to ask whether implementation matters to grand strategy.
Many of the reviews perceived most favourably are those with the weakest mechanisms for implementation. This carries the risk that our perception of whether a review was a ‘success’ or not may be inversely related to how far it actually brought about tangible changes in practice. The authors analysed each UK defence and security review since 1998, data for analysis comprised 3 workshops and over 60 interviews with senior officials. Drawing on insights from public policy and governance theory, as well as strategic studies, the paper will argue this has important implications for understanding the purpose of these reviews, how they link with different ideas about the nature of grand strategy, and how policy and strategy interrelate.
