Management of Public Policies in the Area of National Defense: The Case of the National Defense's First Planning Cycle within the Joint Staff of the Armed Forces of Argentina, 2007-2012

Abstract

This work studied the first National Defense Planning Cycle (NDPC, being CPDN its acronym in Spanish from Ciclo de Planeamiento de la Defensa Nacional) 2007-2012 in the field of the Joint Staff of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic. It attempted to document for the first time a relevant process, the institutional implementation process of a National Defense public policy, decomposing it for analysis in order to present exploratory explanatory hypotheses.

To do this, a theoretical framework and a methodological approach were presented and were used with a view to reconstructing that implementation. Subsequently, the context of the case studied was detailed, both internationally and internally. Then the analytical management-intensive moments of the NDPC, its “design” and “execution” were discussed: the first, based on the details of the agenda of the “Frente para la Victoria” (the governmental alliance) in relation to public policies for the area of National Defense, the actors who had to manage the NDPC and the pre-existing regulatory and institutional scaffolding; the second, through the account of the instruments promoted to achieve the objectives proposed by the said public policy at different chronological stages. Finally, an analysis of the management of the NDPC in these two moments was carried out and conclusions were presented for the NDPC based on the proposed guide to investigate management processes.

The present thesis was not intended to provide a solution to the negative indications described from the implementation of the public policy in question; it tries to contribute to the visualization of its suboptimal results in order to assist in the elaboration of future intervention schemes that allow its detachment from common “patterns of mismanagement” inside the Argentine public policy.

Finally, this research is also a call to pay more attention to the study of Defense planning and the conditions that have to be met (and the situations that should be avoided) for the State to intervene effectively in the design and implementation of public policies in the sector.