Congress and the Politics of Military Reform

Abstract

This essay offers a history and analysis of the politics of military reform during the Reagan presidency. Under the leadership of a diverse coalition within Congress, military reform briefly eclipsed both the Reagan buildup and nuclear arms control as the dominant defense policy agenda in the mid-1980s. Congressional sponsorship of military reform in the last decade was a product not only of the decentralization and democratization of the defense policy process in the House and Senate, but also of the domestic political conditions that made a particular military reform agenda attractive to many members of Congress. Military reform became the singular congressional programmatic contribution to the defense policy process in the 1980s, as well as a rare example of congressional innovation in any policy arena.