Citation

Cobb S. Am. J. Sociol. 1976; 82(1): 163-182.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1976, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/226274

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In an attempt to investigate systematically one aspect of the military-industrial complex thesis, several measures of the impact of defense spending on congressional districts were developed and correlated with two Guttman scales of House voting on defense and foreign policy issues. The party and region of the representatives were controlled. While for the House as a whole there was little support for the hypothesis that representatives from districts highly dependent on defense spending were more likely than representatives from nondependent districts to vote for jingoistic foreign and defense policies, certain subgroups such as the very senior members did evidence such correlation between defense spending concentrations and voting. These results are discussed in terms of pluralist, elitist, and other theories of societal governance.