A Very British National Security State: Formal and informal institutions in the design of UK security policy
| Author | Catarina P Thomson,David Blagden |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148118784722 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118784722
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2018, Vol. 20(3) 573 –593
© The Author(s) 2018
DOI: 10.1177/1369148118784722
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
A Very British National
Security State: Formal and
informal institutions in the
design of UK security policy
Catarina P Thomson and David Blagden
Abstract
What are the roles of government institutions in the design and implementation of effective national
security policy? Using the case of post-2010 reform to Britain’s central government security policy
machinery, we find that formal institutions can help the informal strategy-making institutions on
their periphery to function better. Through interviews with 25 senior officials, we find that Britain’s
National Security Council and quinquennial Strategic Defence and Security Reviews – both instituted
in 2010 with the intention of improving UK security policymaking – remain limited as formal
makers of national strategy. But the networks of individuals and ideas they support, by absolving
some decision-makers of audience costs while immersing others in creative yet coherent strategy-
development communities, have improved the overall quality of UK security policymaking compared
to its pre-2010 condition. This finding also carries implications for other contexts and thus represents
a promising avenue for future research. (Final version accepted 20 June 2018.)
Keywords
audience costs, institutions, National Security Council, security elites, security policy, Strategic
Defence and Security Review
The informal relationships are what make the system work. You don’t get things decided in
informal relationships, but it’s those that actually generate new thinking.1
Over the last decade, UK security policymaking has undergone a process of institutional
formalisation, taking on many ‘American-style’ trappings of the US post–Cold War
‘national security state’ (Porter, 2010). This process began in 2008, with the publication
of a standing UK National Security Strategy (NSS) late in the last Labour government’s
tenure in office (HM Government, 2008). It accelerated in 2010, when David Cameron’s
Conservative–Liberal coalition government established a standing UK National Security
Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Corresponding author:
Catarina P Thomson, Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter,
EX4 4RJ UK.
Email: c.p.thomson@exeter.ac.uk
784722BPI0010.1177/1369148118784722The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsThomson and Blagden
research-article2018
Original Article
574 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20(3)
Council (NSC) and regular quinquennial Strategic Defence and Security Reviews
(SDSRs) to accompany regular NSSs over the same time horizon (HM Government,
2010a, 2010c). As Edmunds (2014: 536) notes, ‘taken together, these initiatives represent
the biggest revision of the architecture of British strategy-making for decades, and signify
a whole-of-government attempt to take seriously the challenges of contemporary strate-
gic practice’. The Conservative majority government elected in 2015 continued this NSC
and NSS/SDSR system (HM Government, 2015), as has Theresa May since becoming
Prime Minister (PM) in 2016. And although 2017–2018’s ‘National Security Capabilities
Review’ (NSCR) (HM Government, 2018) has sought to reconcile capability commit-
ments with straitened post-Brexit financial circumstances (Haynes, 2017), May has thus
far maintained that the 2015 NSS/SDSR provides a stable framework.2
Yet for all of this formalisation, many in both scholarly and policy circles remain con-
cerned that Britain’s much-lamented limitations in national strategy-making continue.3
Indeed, these formal institutions have themselves been identified as further sites of stra-
tegic failure. The NSC is often accused of having become a short-termist crisis response
centre preoccupied with ensuring positive political presentation of the government’s
choices, rather than a provider of long-term strategic direction (Devaney and Harris,
2014: 30–35; Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS), 2012b: 4). The
quinquennial SDSRs have been depicted as loci for inter-Service budgetary contestation
and Treasury-driven fiscal consolidation, which are prone to pre-emption by politically
motivated announcements (Blagden, 2015). In addition – thanks to their 5-yearly regular-
ity – the reviews are now themselves a source of rigidity in defence planning assumptions
(Cornish and Dorman, 2011, 2013; Martin, 2011). Although the 2015 SDSR was received
more favourably (see, for example, The Economist, 2015), the 2010 SDSR in particular
was: widely derided for a lack of strategic coherence and a perception that it was led pri-
marily by a hastily implemented and cuts-driven government spending review rather than
a by a measured consideration of the UK’s strategic circumstances and requirements in
the new context of austerity. (Edmunds, 2014: 527)
Given this critical backdrop, this article aims to answer two related questions. First,
how have these institutional innovations changed the process of designing security policy
in Britain? Second, do these changes represent an improvement in UK security policy-
making that equips the British state with the government machinery needed to protect its
citizens in an uncertain, potentially dangerous future?
Drawing on interview research with 25 senior UK officials involved in the post-2010
NSC and NSS/SDSR processes, we find that these institutional reforms have yielded
significant changes in government behaviour. These changes have in turn produced bet-
ter security policymaking – but not for the reasons often supposed, or professed by the
reforms’ original architects. In line with popular critique, we find that the formal NSC is
often a predominantly tactical body and regularised SDSRs less ‘strategic’ than their
names suggest, falling prey too easily to political/fiscal pre-emption. However, the exist-
ence of these formal institutions has helped the informal institutions that surround British
national security policymaking to function better, by becoming more bureaucratically
coherent while retaining adaptability. Innovative strategic thought – and associated
inter-departmental policy coordination – within Whitehall has often taken place on the
informal margins of formal structures. Such thought involves senior officials swapping
notes before and after meetings between departmental ministers – and drawing in exter-
nal perspectives where necessary – to steer, and subsequently decipher, their elected
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