3 - The Institutionalization of Drone Programs

Summary

How did the new kind of deterritorialized, dematerialized, and individualized warfare ‒ extensive in both time and space ‒ become durable? To what extent can it be considered as part of the normal functioning of the states that use drones? This chapter finds that the development of the use of drones in the US, in comparison with the use of France in the UK and France, is best described as one of institutionalization. The institutionalization of drone programs is defined as the process whereby drone practices become stable and durable activities embedded in the normative fabric of the state. This process derives from a combination of factors, from the formation of a bureaucracy – narrowly defined as the structured, harmonized, and depersonalized interaction of agents – to the formulation of legitimizing legal rationales, and the stabilizing force of the technology itself. The US drone program was stabilized through the creation of structures and bureaucratic interactions, a highly legalistic mode of justification, and narratives about drones being tailor-made to fight a transnational and polymorphous enemy.