Shared Norms but Policy Incoherence: Analysing the Irish Defence Forces’ Marketplace Aspirations

Abstract

This chapter is a contribution to wider civil–military scholarship focussed upon how organisational norms seemingly common to military and civil organisations of government can result in opposing policy positions. Under primary empirical scrutiny is a high-profile disagreement concerning sensitive intelligence implications of a tender for aviation Search and Rescue (SAR) services, which erupted between the Defence Forces and Ireland’s Department of Transport. Serious wider implications of the normative underpinning for that controversy are also explored: in this regard, the chapter will analyse risks to the performance of and partner satisfaction with a landmark Research, Technology and Innovation (RTI) capability within “the Defence Organisation,” a collective term for Ireland’s military and civil components. The chapter thus broadens scholarly scrutiny of civil–military relations in Ireland from a focus, mainly, upon relations between the Defence Forces, on the one hand, and the Departments of Defence and Finance on the other. Herein is a study of interaction between a department and its public and private sector partners having neither responsibility for defence nor its financing.