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Developing a Systematic Decision-Making Framework: Bureaucratic Politics in Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jerel A. Rosati
Jerel A. Rosati
Affiliation:
International Studies at American University
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Abstract

The bureaucratic politics model has achieved great popularity in the study of decision making. Yet too often the term “bureaucratic politics” is used by scholars and practitioners without clearly stating its policy application. The decision-making behavior that occurred during the Johnson and Nixon administrations for SALT I serves to illustrate many of the limits of the model. First, the decision-making structure posited by the bureaucratic politics model is not nearly as prevalent within the executive branch as is commonly assumed. Second, even where the bureaucratic politics structure is present, the decision-making process is not always one of bargaining, compromise, and consensus. Finally, the decision context and the decision participants are ignored in the model. To provide a clearer understanding of policy-making behavior, a more systematic decision-making framework is offered, which should contribute to the development of better model- and theory-building.

Type
Research Note
Information
World Politics , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , January 1981 , pp. 234 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1981

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References

1 Neustadt, , Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: Wiley, 1960), 10.Google Scholar

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5 Allison and Halperin combine Model II (organizational process) and Model III (governmental politics) in their formulation of bureaucratic politics. See their “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,” in Tanter, Raymond and Ullman, Richard H., eds., Theory and Policy in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 40.Google Scholar See Halperin, also, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1974).Google Scholar

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8 Some attempts have been made to determine the applicability of the bureaucratic politics model by comparing it with other decision-making models. However, further confusion has been the result, for the models were not presented and analyzed in a clear, systematic fashion. See Kohl, Wilfred L., “The Nixon-Kissinger Foreign Policy System and U.S.-European Relations: Patterns of Policy Making,” World Politics, XXVIII (October 1975), 1–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donovan, John C., The Cold Warriors: A Policy-Making Elite (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974)Google Scholar; Hughes, Barry B., The Domestic Context of American Foreign Policy (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1978)Google Scholar; Cohen (fn. 7), 78–102; and Quandt, William B., Decade of Decisions: American Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–1976 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).Google Scholar

9 In the initial development of the decision-making approach during the 1950s and early 1960s, the primary emphasis was on the development of a comprehensive conceptual framework. The earlier works attempted to locate the principal components of the system—clusters of variables—that influenced foreign policy behavior. Although the 1970s have witnessed advancement in the development of decision-making models and theoretical formulations, scholars have focused only on one or two clusters of decision variables. This lack of comprehensiveness in the recent literature has resulted in an oversimplification of policy-making behavior. See Snyder, Richard C., Bruck, H. W., and Sapin, Burton, “Decision-Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics,” in Snyder, and others, Foreign Policy Decision-Making: An Approach to the Study of International Politics (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), 14–185Google Scholar; James A. Robinson and R. Roger Majak, “The Theory of Decision-Making,” and Rosenau, James N., “The Premises and Promises of Decision-Making Analysis,” in Charlesworth, James C., ed., Contemporary Political Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1967), 175–88Google Scholar, 189–211.

10 Halperin (fn. 5), 5.

11 Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).Google Scholar

12 I am attempting to allow as much flexibility as possible for the bureaucratic politics model. For instance, none of my propositions contain the notion “where you stand depends on where you sit”—which is a definite constraint for the model. In this way the applicability of the model is maximized.

13 Allison and Halperin (fn. 5), 42.

14 Halperin (fn. 5), 311.

15 Allison (fn. 11), 164, 172.

16 Ibid., 162.

17 Unless, of course, it is a “negative” decision—one in which no action or implementation is required.

18 Halperin (fn. 5), 313.

19 Allison and Halperin (fn. 5), 53.

20 The bureaucratic politics model has been principally supported through the use of defense policy case studies. (On this basis I chose SALT I as a case study.) See Ciboski, Kenneth N., “The Bureaucratic Connection: Explaining the Skybolt Decision,” in Endicott and Stafford (fn. 6), 374–88Google Scholar; Allison, Graham T., “Questions About the Arms Race: Who's Racing Whom? A Bureaucratic Perspective,” in Pfaltzgraf, Robert L. Jr, ed., Contrasting Approaches to Strategic Arms Control (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974)Google Scholar; Halperin, Morton H., “The Decision to Deploy the ABM: Bureaucratic and Domestic Politics in the Johnson Administration,” World Politics, XXV (October 1972), 62–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Armacost, Michael H., The Politics of Weapons Innovation: The Thor-jupiter Controversy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; and Beard, Edmund, Developing the ICBM: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

21 Sources for the decision-making behavior concerning SALT I during the Johnson administration are: Newhouse, John, Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973)Google Scholar; Frye, Alton, “U.S. Decision-Making for SALT,” in Willrich, Mason and Rhinelander, John B., eds., SALT: The Moscow Agreements and Beyond (New York: Free Press, 1974), 66–100Google Scholar; Johnson, Lyndon Baines, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Popular Library, 1971)Google Scholar; U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Relations, Foreign, Soviet Diplomacy and Negotiating Behavior: Emerging New Context for U.S. Diplomacy, Committee Print (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979)Google Scholar; Kahan, Jerome H., Security in the Nuclear Age:, Developing U.S. Strategic Arms Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1975)Google Scholar; Rosenthal, Burton R., “Formulating Negotiating Positions for SALT: 1968, 1969–1972,” in Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, IV, Appendices (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 325–43Google Scholar; and Wolfe, Thomas W., The SALT Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1979).Google Scholar

22 Newhouse (fn. 21), 36; Wolfe (fn. 21), 24.

23 Newhouse (fn. 21), 35.

24 Ibid.

25 Johnson (fn. 21), 483–89.

26 Newhouse (fn. 21), 108. For an in-depth discussion of Johnson's foreign policy machinery, see Destler (fn. 7), chap. 4; Graff, Henry, The Tuesday Cabinet: Deliberation and Decision on Peace and War under Lyndon B. Johnson (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970)Google Scholar; Geyelin, Fred, Lyndon B. Johnson and the World (New York: Praeger, 1966)Google Scholar; and Clark, Keith C. and Legere, Laurence J., The President and the Management of National Security (New York: Praeger, 1969).Google Scholar

27 Newhouse (fn. 21), 120.

28 Actually, the process was considerably more complex. ACDA was the agency that had formal jurisdiction for presenting the initial proposal. However, the members of the Halperin group were able to convince members of ACDA and the State Department that their method of formulating the proposal was preferable. The problem was that the Pentagon perceived ACDA as the “super-dove” agency. Adrian Fisher, Deputy Director of ACDA, played a crucial role in reconciling these positions. Nevertheless, in the end, it was ACDA which formally presented the proposal to the JCS. See Rosenthal (fn. 21), 329, and Newhouse (fn. 21), 114–16.

29 Frye (fn. 21), 77.

30 The Committee of Principals was chaired by Secretary of State Dean Rusk. It also included the Director of ACDA, William Foster; the Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford; the Chairman of the JCS, General Wheeler; and the President's Special Assistant for National Security, Walt Rostow. The Committee had been created to supervise work on the Non-Proliferation Treaty. According to Newhouse, the Committee of Principals was not the forum for SALT I because of the recent departure of Secretary of Defense McNamara, without whom Rusk was not capable of managing the Joint Chiefs. Furthermore, ACDA was constrained by the suspicions of the JCS toward it. Halperin and his group filled the void. Newhouse (fn. 21), 110–11.

31 Kahan (fn. 21), 126; Rosenthal (fn. 21), 331.

32 It is Newhouse's belief that the Joint Chiefs bought the proposal at the price of excluding both a MIRV (Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicle) ban and an ABM limit. Newhouse (fn. 21), 12; see also Wolfe (fn. 21), 25.

33 Newhouse (fn. 21), 125.

34 In addition to the sources cited in fn. 21, others for the decision-making behavior during the Nixon administration include: Marvin, and Kalb, Bernard, Kissinger (New York: Dell, 1974)Google Scholar; Brandon, Henry, The Retreat of American Power (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973)Google Scholar; Morris, Roger, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Row, 1977)Google Scholar; Leacacos, John P., “Kissinger's Apparat,” and I. M. Destler, “What Can One Man Do?” Foreign Policy, No. 5 (Winter 1971–1972), 3–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 28–40; Orr, Samuel C., “Defense Report/National Security Council Network Gives White House Tight Rein over SALT Strategy,” National Journal, III (April 24, 1971), 877–86Google Scholar; Garthoff, Raymond, “Negotiating SALT,” The Wilson Quarterly, I (Autumn 1977), 76–85Google Scholar, and “Negotiating with the Russians,” International Security, I (Spring 1977), 3–24; Nixon, Richard, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Warner, 1978)Google Scholar; Safire, William, Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975)Google Scholar; Szulc, Tad, The Illusion of Peace: Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years (New York: Viking, 1978)Google Scholar; and Kissinger, Henry, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979).Google Scholar

35 Newhouse (fn. 21), 144. For an excellent description of Nixon's foreign policy apparatus, see Crocker, Chester A., “The Nixon-Kissinger National Security Council System, 1969–1972: A Study in Foreign Policy Management,” in Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, VI, Appendices (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 79–99Google Scholar; Kalb (fn. 34), chap. 4; Leacacos (fn. 34); and Destler (fn. 7), chap. 4.

36 Rosenthal (fn. 21), 333.

37 The Joint Chiefs argued that each warhead on the missile could be independently targeted (unlike MRVS), thereby making the ss-9 a more devastating weapon. Frye (fn. 21), 81; Rosenthal (fn. 21), 334.

38 Newhouse (fn. 21), 161, 162. See also Rosenthal (fn. 21), 334.

39 Brandon (fn. 34), 310–11.

40 Newhouse (fn. 21), 171.

41 Ibid., 186.

42 Option E set a limit of 1900 offensive missiles; either 100 ABMS for the capital or no ABMS at all; MIRV was completely excluded; land mobile missiles, the modification of silos, and new hardened silos were forbidden. Brandon (fn. 34), 311.

43 Garthoff (fn. 34), 76–79; Wolfe (fn. 21), 33–34.

44 The agreement between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. stipulated that limitations in both offensive and defensive weapons would be discussed in one package; that the ABM site would not be limited strictly to the capital city; that U.S. Forward-Based Systems in Europe would not be discussed; and that there would be no quantity equivalence in missiles, simply a freeze. Kissinger (fn. 34), 820; Garthoff, , “Negotiating SALT” (fn. 34), 80–81.Google Scholar

45 Kalb (fn. 34), 358–78; Kissinger (fn. 34), 1202–57.

46 See Art, Robert, “Bureaucratic Politics and American Foreign Policy: A Critique,” Policy Sciences, IV (December 1973), 467–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krasner, Stephen D., “Are Bureaucracies Important (Or Allison's Wonderland),” Foreign Policy, No. 7 (Summer 1972), 159–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ball, D. J., “The Blind Men and the Elephant: A Critique of Bureaucratic Politics Theory,” Australian Outlook, XXVIII (April 1974), 71–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perlmutter, Amos, “The Presidential Political Center and Foreign Policy: A Critique of the Revisionist and Bureaucratic-Political Orientations,” World Politics, XXVII (October 1974), 87–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steiner, Miriam, “The Elusive Essence of Decision: A Critical Comparison of Allison's and Snyder's Decision-Making Approaches,” International Studies Quarterly, XXI (June 1977), 389–422CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nathan, James H. and Oliver, James K., “Bureaucratic Politics: Academic Windfalls and Intellectual Pitfalls,” journal of Political and Military Sociology, VI (Spring 1978), 81–91.Google Scholar

47 Krasner (fn. 48), 168. This fact is occasionally acknowledged even by bureaucratic politics theorists:

The President stands at the center of the foreign policy process in the United States. His role and influence over decisions are qualitatively different than those of any other participants. In any foreign policy decision widely perceived at the time to be important, the President will be a principal if not the principal figure determining the general direction of actions.

However, in these instances the decision-making pattern is not considered to be bureaucratic politics. Halperin, Morton and Kanter, Arnold, “The Bureaucratic Perspective: A Preliminary Perspective,” in Halperin, and Kanter, , eds., Readings in American Foreign Policy: A Bureaucratic Perspective (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 6.Google Scholar

48 Newhouse (fn. 21), 36.

49 Barnett Rubin's case study on the 1971 JVP (Janata Vimukti Peramuna) insurgency in Sri Lanka provides an excellent example of a “localized” decision-making structure. “Although it took place at a time when the Nixon-Kissinger National Security Council (NSC) system dominated American foreign policy, the emergency was mainly handled within the State Department, where the regional bureau staff had the action.” No agency opposed the leadership of the Bureau for Near East and South Asia Affairs (NEA). As a result, U.S. policy was formulated within NEA, at the Country Director level. Rubin, , “The U.S. Response to the JVP Insurgency in Sri Lanka,” Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, VII, Appendices (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 179–91.Google Scholar

50 Robinson, James A. and Snyder, Richard C., “Decision-making in International Politics,” in Kelman, Herbert C., ed., International Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1965), 456.Google Scholar

51 For other potentially fruitful uses of the concept “issue area,” see Potter's, William C. review of the literature in “Issue Area and Foreign Policy Analysis,” International Organization, XXXIV (Summer 1980), 405–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Hermann, , “International Crisis as a Situational Variable,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy (New York: Free Press, 1969), 416.Google Scholar

53 Spanier, John, Games Nations Play: Analyzing International Politics (New York: Praeger, 1975), 410.Google Scholar

54 Although Charles Hermann makes use of such a relationship, he acknowledges the existence of numerous other variables that can affect the decision process. Thus, it is “very unlikely” that knowledge of the structure alone can determine the decision-making process, either in the formulation or the implementation phase. Hermann, , “Decision Structure and Process: Influences on Foreign Policy,” in East, Maurice A., Salmore, Stephen A., and Hermann, Charles F., Why Nations Act: Theoretical Perspectives for Comparative Foreign Policy Studies (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1978), 81.Google Scholar

55 See Allison (fn. 11), for a discussion of the “rational-actor” model, and Steinbruner, John D., The Cybernetic Theory of Decision: New Dimensions of Political Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar, for a description of the “analytic” paradigm.

56 Janis, , Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1972), 101–35.Google Scholar

57 Steinbruner (fn. 55), 147.

58 See Allison (fn. 11), on “organizational process,” and Steinbruner (fn. 55), concerning the “cybernetic” paradigm.

59 Ibid., 124–36. Still other modes of thinking are possible. For a discussion of “bounded rationality,” see Simon, Herbert A., Models of Man: Social and Rational (New York: Wiley, 1957).Google ScholarLindblom, discusses “incrementalism” in “The Science of Muddling Through,” (fn. 2).Google ScholarMorgan, Patrick M., in Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977)Google Scholar, suggests the notion of “sensible” decision making. For a general discussion of the importance of the thinking processes of decision makers, see G. Matthew Bonham and Michael J. Shapiro, “Thought and Action in Foreign Policy,” and Holsti, Ole R., “Foreign Policy Decision-Makers Viewed Psychologically: Cognitive Process Approaches,” in Bonham, and Shapiro, , eds., Thought and Action in Foreign Policy (Basel and Stuttgart: Birkhauser, 1977), 1–8Google Scholar and 9–74.

60 A detailed discussion of these variables and their impact on the decision process is beyond the scope of this paper. For a work on the decision context as a situational variable and its effect on the decision process, see Brady, Linda B., “The Situation and Foreign Policy,” in East and others (fn. 54), 173–90.Google Scholar Also see Hermann, Margaret G., “Effects of Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders on Foreign Policy,” in East and others (fn. 54), 49–68Google Scholar, for a general discussion of the importance of decision participants' attributes.

61 This is not to imply that the component “decision process” does not lend itself to theory building. The decision process can be classified into a number of fundamental types (e.g., “bargaining”) and relationships with other decision components can be hypothesized. Charles Hermann (fn. 54), 83–90, has already made a step in this direction.

62 The five decisional components are derived from Robinson and Majak (fn. 9), 178.