Defence industrialisation in the NICs : case studies from Brazil and India

Vervain Evans, Carol (1994) Defence industrialisation in the NICs : case studies from Brazil and India. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Text - Submitted Version Download (18MB)

Abstract

Accompanying the emergence of the newly industrialising countries (NICs) in the 1980s was the remarkable growth in these states' defence manufacturing and export capabilities. An important objective of this Ph.D. thesis is to explore and clarify the relationship between defence production and industrialisation in the NICs. My research employs an international political economy approach since neither the prevailing scholarship in the fields of international relations (which emphasises strategic and political factors), nor of development economics (which concentrates on the relationship of military expenditure and growth) are adequate. In addition, existing explanations of defence industrialisation have paid little if any attention to the critical role of the firm and of technology. As a consequence, they analytically fail to capture the complex process by which firms as well as states succeed or fail to achieve international competitiveness. As is argued in this thesis, firms playa crucial role in the generation, utilisation and diffusion of technology, which is essential to the attainment of arms production and export capabilities. Thus, a more insightful, powerful conceptualisation of the relationship between "defence" and "industrialisation" necessarily involves a discussion of firms and their technological capabilities, and how their behaviour is influenced by their strategic interaction with the state. This framework also explicates the differing levels of defence manufacturing and export performance among the NICs. The case studies in this thesis are of Brazil and India -- two industrialising countries whose defence/industrial bases are similar though their respective external security environments differ markedly. A comparative analysis of these states suggests that the relative success of Brazil's arms industry in the 1980s was attributable to its highly developed, competitive capital goods firms and to a government technology policy that reinforced linkages between the defence and capital goods industries.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 1994 Carol Vervain Evans
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD2329 Industrialization J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Sets:	Departments > International Relations
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/3989

Actions (login required)

Record administration - authorised staff only