South African defence decision-making: analysing dysfunctional approaches

Col (ret) Gerhard M. Louw and Abel Esterhuyse

Defense & Security Analysis, 2022, vol. 38, issue 4, 389-409

Abstract: Defence planning in South Africa has gradually declined to the point of collapse; for reasons that are both complex and largely unexplained. While South Africa is not alone in this situation, the paucity of universal theories to explain the ineffectiveness of defence planning currently limits the theoretical validity of analyses that seek to address the phenomenon. Generating a substantive hypothesis that explains not only the causes of South Africa's current defence predicament, but also those of other countries in similar circumstances, became the paper's primary purpose. By abstracting from theories in management sciences and security studies, the paper concludes that top management's approaches to defence planning are the primary mechanisms that bring about success or failure in defence decision-making. The authors subsequently integrate relevant critical, contextual, and functional approaches to defence planning in a theoretical framework, using empirical evidence from the South African defence environment to substantiate their arguments throughout.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1080/14751798.2022.2110701

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