Defense and strategic studies traditionally have paid little attention to the structure and administrative context within which policy decisions are made. This volume fills that existing gap, focusing on the principal actors in the defense decisionmaking field, their relationships to one another, and the statutory and legal provisions governing the spheres of responsibility and competence among military, civil, and paramilitary institutions. The book is designed to assist scholars and policymakers in comparative analyses of complex organizations and institutions and to identify similarities and differences among the central administrative structures of the major industrial states. Toward this end, each contributor concentrates on his or her own transnational analysis. The authors are all respected experts on defense issues in their own countries, and their analyses conform to a common framework developed to compare central organizations of defense around the world and to define what'states can learn from each other’s experiences and what developments can be expected.