ABSTRACT
The management and control of government programs for military research and development (R&D) have dominated thinking about the governance of R&D in a number of leading industrialized countries for most of the post-World War II period. The reason is quite simple. For many years, national security was the principal rubric justifying government spending on R&D, and military spending dwarfed all other categories in national R&D budgets. This was true above all in those countries like the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France that maintained large military forces, including nuclear forces, across the whole spectrum of military technology. The mission-oriented 'style' for government R&D in these countries can be traced directly to the central place they have given to military R&D. (Ergas, 1987: 191-245.) As a result, most of the standard government practices for planning and overseeing large R&D projects have evolved in the context of military projects and the problems they pose for accountability and efficiency. And, while the bulk of military R&D funds has been devoted to engineering development activities, military spending on basic research, particularly in the United States, has been significant in many fields and so has played, at least implicitly, an important role in government policy for fundamental science, as well.
