Comprehensively Planning for Peace? : A Case Study of Trident in the Three Streams in 2015 and 2016

Sammanfattning: A case study research strategy and secondary and content analysis was adopted to investigate what blocked a comprehensive discourse from the agenda of Trident renewal from 2015 to 2016 and the constraints that blocked action. Trident renewal was a policy window, which is a critical fleeting opportunity to change the agenda. A comprehensive discourse raises the problem of the military industrial complex and links this problem to the solutions of general and complete disarmament (GCD) and conversion. Agendas change when problems, policies, and politics are coupled at policy windows. Results showed that conversion was available, but activities in the politics stream constrained it, and conversion was made more available and circulated than GCD, which was entirely absent as a solution. Despite this, the problem of the underlying military industrial complex was given very little visibility by the media. On the other hand, opponents to Trident renewal linked conversion not to the problem of the military industrial complex but to problems of declining military spending and conventional forces, in contravention of GCD.