Policy termination in state-driven spheres: the role of inter-agency de-alignment

Abstract Early studies of policy termination focused on identifying the drivers and barriers to ending programs, such as the emergence of fiscal and other exigencies, which can lead to policy and program cancellation, but also noted that such factors do not always lead to closure. More recent work has advanced thinking on the subject and acknowledged a wider range of possible policy choices beyond simple cancellation, including modest reform or termination of small parts of a policy and more substantial partial dismantling, and in so doing has altered the nature of the field. Both these literatures to date, however, have struggled to identify the underlying reasons for alternative courses of action, focusing almost exclusively on the relative strengths and balance of power of social coalitions promoting termination versus those supporting the status quo, which is at best indicative. This logic also fails to deal with terminations that occur in spheres where social actors are less prominent, which are the subject of this article. The article uses examples from defense policy and military spending in Canada to examine the rise, cancellation, resurrection, and downscaling of several interlinked major naval weapons programs over the period 1975–2025 in order to explore the dynamics present in state-driven terminations. It focuses particular attention on the role of changing government commitments to programs and requests desired by armed forces, highlighting program continuation when government-service visions remain aligned and termination or dismantling when they do not.