A major Norwegian defence procurement project takes decades from project initiation to the desired military capability is delivered and has reached full operational capability. The Norwegian Armed Forces’ primary mission is to maintain a credible deterrence and prevent armed conflicts arising, meaning that the capability acquired through military procurement projects must play into future general deterrence. Do Norway’s strategic military capability procurement projects contribute to a credible and capable deterrence? The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the deterrence potential of two chosen Norwegian military procurement projects of strategic importance. The capabilities studied are the acquisition of the US fifth generation fighter, F-35 Lightning II and the 212CD submarine to be designed and built by Germany. The two projects have a combined estimated investment cost of 113 billion NOK. Deterrence is a large area in social science and the discipline of War Studies. This study applies a deterrence theory lens, primarily based on the conclusion in Zagare’s and Kilgour’s perfect deterrence theory regarding the importance of capable and credible threats, operationalised through Dalsjö’s five dimensions of threshold defence. The analysis identifies a clear credibility issue with one of the projects and the paradox that cost saving decisions intended to ensure operational availability and increase credibility also make the capability more vulnerable and less credible due to lack of redundancy.

Student Number : 9908223M - PhD thesis - School of Social Sciences - Faculty of Humanities / This thesis examines the status and role of parliamentary committees in democratic theory with a view to critically assessing the performance of one such committee, the South African version of the PAC, SCOPA. It advances a pluralist theory of popular sovereignty according to which there is no single institutional complex or site, which exclusively expresses the will of the people. The latter is the case in monist theories, which reduce democracy to its practice in a single site. Rousseau and Weber are critically examined in this connection. In the pluralist notion advanced in this thesis the popular will is expressed and realized in a plurality of institutional sites and modalities of exercise. On this perspective parliamentary committees perform a function vital to the constitution of popular sovereignty itself. They are indispensable to the formation by the people of an accurate perception by it of what the Executive is doing in its name. Their investigative work is thus constitutive of the formation of a democratic subject and will. Parliamentary committees are thus central to the satisfaction of the conditions of the deliberative dimension of democracy. On this definition, parliamentary committees must in addition themselves conform to the principles of deliberation in their own practice. This specifically deliberative conception of democracy is then further delineated by distinguishing it from the aggregation – majoritarian perspective and defending it against a variety of criticisms, including that of Chantal Mouffe. With this conceptual and normative framework in place, the British and American committee systems are examined in order to establish some reference points in terms of the institutional practice of parliamentary committees. The focus then shifts to the parliamentary committees of the South African Parliament. The constitutional and legal foundation for parliamentary committees (in the South African system) is examined with particular reference to SCOPA itself and the first five years of the new parliamentary committee system identified as a period during which several South African parliamentary committees, including SCOPA, effectively exercised their “oversight” function. Once the Government’s SDP entered the scene all things changed. This thesis examines the formation of the JIT, paying particular attention to the exclusion of the HSIU and the interventions of the Speaker, Hon Frene Ginwala. It identifies in close detail all the flaws in the SDP procurement process as well as the contradictions and lacunae in the final JIT Report itself. These are of such a magnitude as to render unreasonable any claim to the contrary and in endorsing the Report SCOPA thus clearly failed in its essential function. The notion of a threshold concept of reasonable adequacy is introduced as limiting the conditions under which committee decisions can legitimately be taken via majority voting. The argument is advanced that these were clearly not met in the case of the SCOPA decision under discussion. The implications of this “collapse” of SCOPA for South African democracy more broadly are then identified and discussed in terms of deliberative democratic theory.

Försvarsanskaffning och dess omkringliggande faktorer är relativt lite utforskat, särskilt i svensk kontext. En anledning är möjligtvis att utvecklingen skett fort och medfört att teorin har blivit ifrånsprungen. Det medför intresset av att studera faktorer som påverkar den svenska försvarsanskaffningen gällande valet av vem anskaffningen sker ifrån. Arbetet är en kvalitativ utforskande studie med en induktiv ansats med syfte att förstå de underliggande teman och mönster som finns bakom den svenska anskaffningsprocessen. Arbetet belyser anskaffningsprocessen relativt brett, därför används Hartleys teori byggd utifrån studier kring Ministry of defence i Storbritannien.  Empirin utgörs av djupintervjuer där respondenterna representerar Försvarsmakten, FMV och politiken. Teorin används sedan för att analysera empirin, för att slutligen belysa inomvetenskapliga såväl som utomvetenskapliga utvecklingspunkter. Studien kom fram till att säkerhetspolitik och ekonomi påverkar den svenska anskaffningsprocessen av komplex försvarsmateriel i stor utsträckning. Påverkan är positiv exempelvis genom att den har spin-off effekter till övriga samhället men har en negativ effekt genom att det fördyrar anskaffningen. En framgångsfaktor gällande svensk försvaranskaffning är svenska modellen som hanterar faktorer kring soft systems engineering väl. / There is relatively little research into defence procurement and its surrounding factors, particularly in a Swedish context. One possible reason could be that development has been rapid and has overtaken theory. This raises interest in studying factors that influence Swedish defence procurement in terms of the selection of whom procurement occurs from. This paper is a qualitative investigative study with an inductive approach, the aim of which is to understand the underlying themes and patterns behind the Swedish procurement process. The paper takes a broad view of the procurement process and, therefore, Hartley’s theory is used, which is built on studies of the UK Ministry of Defence. The empirics consist of in-depth interviews where the respondents represent the Swedish Armed Forces, the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) and the Swedish Ministry of Defence. The theory is then used to analyse the empirics, to finally illustrate theoretical as well as practical points of development. The results of this study show that defence policy and economy influence the Swedish procurement process for complex armaments to a large extent. The effects are positive in terms of some positive spin-off effects for the rest of the society, but there are negative effects because it makes procurement more expensive. One success factor for Swedish defence procurement is the Swedish model that effectively deals with factors surrounding soft systems engineering.

En Irak et en Afghanistan, les EEI (engins explosifs improvisés) ont durement atteint les matériels militaires et les soldats occidentaux. Cette confrontation entre haute et faible technicité soulève la question des choix techniques. Les rapports institutionnels et les acteurs mettent habituellement en avant deux raisons pour justifier le choix de la haute technicité : la nécessité de jouir d'une supériorité technique sur l'adversaire pour vaincre, et l'imprévisibilité des futures interventions militaires. L'étude de terrain sur le système de missile antichars Milan et son successeur temporaire, le Javelin, montre que les combattants ne lient pas la polyvalence à la technicité, et que leur travail est en train d'être fonctionnalisé. En effet, les concepteurs (États-majors, DGA, industriels) ont recours à l'approche systémique pour améliorer la cohérence entre matériels et accroître la performance d'ensemble. Cette approche s'inspire de la rationalité managériale, qui pénètre de plus en plus le milieu militaire. Or, les combattants réinventent souvent leurs matériels du fait du caractère imprédictible des conflits, et la puissance née de cette rationalité gestionnaire se révèle sur le terrain en partie fragile et déréalisée. La complexité ressentie par les acteurs à propos des armements contemporains serait alors le révélateur d'une évolution technique hors sol et hors du temps commun, distante des êtres humains concrets. / In Iraq and in Afghanistan, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) severely hit Western military equipment and personnel. This high-tech / low-tech face-off raises questions about technical choices. Institutional reports and actors usually justify the choice of high technicity on two grounds: the need to have technical superiority over rivals to win and the uncertainty surrounding future military interventions. A ground study about the Milan antitank missile system and his temporary successor, the Javelin, revealed versatility is not related to technicity in users' mind, and showed servants are being functionalised. Indeed, designers (military HQs, DGA, private industries) have opted for a systemic approach to increase consistency among equipment and gain in overall performance. Users have got considered as a piece of the system — serving a function. This approach owes much to managerial rationality, which has pervaded the military organisation to a high degree. However, fighters often re-invent their equipment role due to war unpredictability, while power delivered by managerial rationality proves to be partly fragile and derealised. Complexity actors detect about contemporary weapons seems to be a pointer of a technical evolution carried out above ground and beyond time, remote from concrete human beings.

The master thesis is devoted to a nontraditional, however, in the todays world to a very current topic, arms industry and its support. The thesis connects the theoretical concept of the strategic trade policy (defined by P. Krugman or J. Brander) to its practical interpretation and application in the defence and security industry. The first chapter explains the strategic trade policy using the Brander Spencer analysis. The topic of the second chapter is strategic industries and this chapter answers the question whether the defence and security industry is a strategic industry or not. The third chapter analyses the possibilities of the support of DSI and compares approaches of different EU member states. The last chapter is devoted to the solution of this problem. The main contribution of this thesis is a new interpretation of the strategic trade policy, analysis of the importance of the defence and security industry and its support and suggestion of practical measures for Czech companies and for the Czech Ministry of Defence.