Public Money & Management

Accounting, Accountability and Governance in Defence Spending

Defence spending has become a central issue on national policy agendas, amid rising geopolitical tensions and demands for more strategic, efficient, and accountable use of public resources. This new Public Money & Management (PMM) theme seeks to explore the governance, accounting, budgeting, and performance dimensions of defence-related expenditures through a multi-disciplinary and international lens.

We invite theoretical and empirical contributions that critically examine the institutions, mechanisms, and technologies shaping defence spending and governance. The theme is particularly interested in bridging perspectives across Europe, Australasia, and North America, fostering both academic insight and practitioner relevance. Contributions could cover, for example:

• Accountability and transparency in defence spending, for example mechanisms for achieving transparency in classified or opaque environments; the roles of oversight bodies, audits, and civil society; and cross-country governance comparisons.
• Procurement and risk management in defence acquisition, for example institutional inefficiencies and risk sources; procurement strategies and policy outcomes; integration of risk management in defence systems.
• Strategic performance management in defence, for example performance evaluation in national security contexts; effects of budgeting models on accountability and performance; aligning capabilities, strategy, and spending.
• Geopolitics, innovation, and defence governance: impact of emerging technologies on defence spending; national and transnational governance (for instance NATO, AUKUS); institutional agility and adaptive responses.
• Ethics and anti-corruption in defence, for example anti-corruption mechanisms in procurement, the role of whistleblowers and the media; lessons from international anti-bribery frameworks.
• How to increase defence spending, which would be a challenge for many countries, would be heavily dependent on additional borrowing and might require novel approaches (joint funding vehicles, for example, a ‘defence bank’).

We also welcome contributions that explore other relevant topics that align with the overarching theme.

Article types

• Research articles (maximum 8,000 words): subject to double-blind peer review by academic and practitioner reviewers
• New development articles (maximum 3,500 words): shorter, innovative insights, usually peer reviewed.
• Debate articles (maximum 1,000 words): provocative pieces to stimulate discussion accepted at the theme editors’ and PMM’s editors’ discretion, occasionally peer reviewed.

The journal

PMM has a long-established reputation for creating dialogue between researchers and practitioners and between people working in public finance and public management (https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rpmm20/about-this-journal). PMM’s articles are edited to be easily accessible to multiple readers. The journal’s editorial team (editors, board and publisher) are committed to PMM’s articles being read by practitioners and policy-makers who need to understand the latest research evidence.