Abstract
How do ideas about military technology become politically influential? This paper sets out to examines how competing visions of military technology emerge, gain dominance, and shape German defence planning. It focuses on public debates surrounding ‘classic’ (armour, artillery, etc.) and innovative military technologies (autonomous weapon systems, AI targeting, UAS/UGV, etc.), and analyses whether shifts in discursive prominence are reflected in formal defence planning and procurement decisions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s Zeitenwende. The paper advances an ideational political economy account of military innovation. It argues that under crisis and uncertainty, narratives structure how security problems are defined and which technological solutions appear urgent and legitimate. Private actors, like neo-defence start-ups, promote solutionist narratives presenting innovation as strategically necessary and economically efficient. Through discursive coalitions and epistemic authority claims, certain ideas structure agenda-setting and prioritization in defence planning and procurement while others remain marginal. Empirically, the paper combines large-scale text analysis through Discourse Network Analysis, document analysis, and elite interviews. The core dataset includes roughly three million German newspaper articles (2020-present), defence strategy documents, procurement decisions, capability programmes, and defence firm materials. I trace narrative evolution with Discourse Network Analysis, identify coalitions, and measure shifts in idea dominance (classic versus innovative military technologies), linking these temporally to defence decisions, to demonstrate how ideas become politically influential. This paper aims to answer how competing ideas about military technology shape agenda-setting and procurement in German defence policy and makes three contributions. Empirically, it provides the first systematic, longitudinal mapping of military innovation framing and prioritisation in German defence debates since 2020. Theoretically, it demonstrates how ideational power and solutionist narratives shape security sector prioritization. Methodologically, it shows how discourse network analysis can connect large-scale public debate to defence planning, with implications for understanding how commercially driven narratives influence national security policy.
Panel: Stepping into the Future: Military Technology, Innovation Practices, and Contemporary Challenges