Career incentives prevent officials from recommending base closures

Evidence

The result of all this, according to the final subcommittee report that Pincus helped author, is that “within the government departments most directly concerned—State and Defense—we found little initiative to reduce or eliminate any of these overseas facilities.” What’s more, for State Department and Pentagon officials, closing a base is hardly a way to boost a career. “It is only to be expected that those in embassies abroad, and also at overseas military facilities, would seek to justify continued operations in their particular areas,” explained the subcommittee report. “Otherwise, they recommend a reduction in their own position.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 788

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Career-incentive explanation for base persistence connects to public choice theory and the broader bureaucracy literature the reader may know.

Related

• Career incentives lead officials to keep overseas bases open (similarity 0.95)
• Rotating rationales always justify keeping any base open (similarity 0.80)
• Base closures abroad tend to be offset by new base construction elsewhere (similarity 0.80)
• Overseas bases generate dependent communities that resist closure (similarity 0.79)
• Closing overseas bases yields immediate and long-term fiscal savings (similarity 0.78)