Congressional Influence on Defense Policy (1993-2012)

Abstract

Defense policy has two fronts to deal with: one for external threats and the other for its domestic foundations. Traditionally, defense policy has been developed to protect the United States from the threats from the outside and this part of defense policy is controlled by the executive branch. However, its institutional and organizational foundations are based on its citizens, industries and economy. This part of defense policy has been influenced by Congress, the representatives of citizens. Specifically, the defense budget is a key area that can be controlled by Congress. In this thesis, I analyzed the Congressional influence on defense policy using three factors such as party unity, accuracy of vote prediction based on ideology, and cost of amendment. I attempt to consider an amendment as the unit of the analysis and examine the effect of the factors on passage of amendment. I also compare the authorization process and the appropriation process. As the result of the analysis, I find that the authorization process is quite different from the appropriation process even though these two processes are dealing with the same subject - defense budget. The authorization process is more policy oriented while the appropriation process is more budget related. Amendments in authorization bills are more predictable than those in appropriation bills. In the authorization process, majority party unity and accuracy of vote prediction by ideology have positive effects on passage of amendment, and cost of amendment has negative effect on it. In appropriations, all three factors do not show statistical significance and it is necessary to analyze amendments case by case.