Arms Control and Strategic Arms Voting in the U.S. Senate

Abstract

This article examines the basis of U.S. Senate support for defense spending and arms control from 1967 to 1983. Some of the findings include the following: Those senators still in office at the end of the 1970s voted the same way on SALT II as they had on ABM limitation in the late 1960s, so no long-term change occurred in the senators' positions on these arms control issues. In contrast, the considerable freedom that senators have to stake out a position of their choice on the hawk/dove continuum can be seen in the weak coefficients of determination between a senator's position and those of his or her predecessors and contemporary fellow senator from the same state. As for the military-industrial complex, traces of its influence are, during the 1970s, at best weakly associated with a senator's hawkishness or dovishness. There are indications of a modest effect of defense-related PACs on roll-call voting in the early 1980s. Although this is cause for concern about the future, other evidence in the article undermines belief in the military-industrial complex model.