This chapter examines the origins and consequences of national security institutions in the United States during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. It explains the political logic shaping continuity and change in institutional design. The limited threat of bureaucratic punishment during Eisenhower and Kennedy prompted both to maintain integrated institutions through most of their presidencies. In contrast, fears that bureaucratic leaks would derail passage of his transformative social and economic legislation led Lyndon Johnson to adopt fragmented institutions. These fragmented institutions came at a cost: They degraded the quality of information that the bureaucracy provided. As a result, Johnson based the most consequential foreign policy choice of his presidency – the escalation in Vietnam – on incomplete and biased information. The analysis suggests that the costliest American foreign policy miscalculation of the Cold War was in part a tragic consequence of how Johnson resolved the trade-off between good information and political security.

This chapter explores the origins and consequences of national security institutions in the People’s Republic of China during the tenure of Mao Zedong. It first explains the political logic behind Mao’s choice to shift from integrated to fragmented institutions: Mao chose to weaken the bureaucracy to ensure a stable political succession after his death. It then presents a medium-n analysis to show how this shift from integrated to fragmented institutions degraded China’s crisis performance. Detailed process tracing of two cases illustrates how different institutional designs shaped crisis performance through poor bureaucratic information provision at the onset of each crisis. Prior to the 1962 Taiwan Strait Crisis, Mao’s decision-making benefitted from high-quality bureaucratic information that comparatively inclusive and open institutions afforded. By the onset of the 1969 Sino-Soviet Border conflict, however, Mao was forced to make decisions based on incomplete and biased information provided by bureaucrats who feared Mao’s retribution. The chapter thus illustrates how institutional changes can dramatically change the quality of information upon which the same leader bases their choice of conflict.

This chapter presents an institutional theory of miscalculation on the road to war. The central proposition is that leaders face a trade-off between good information and political security. This trade-off is discussed in two parts. The chapter first discusses the informational constraints faced by leaders contemplating beginning an international crisis, explaining why integrated institutions that feature inclusive and open information flows tend to deliver better information to leaders. The chapter then discusses the political logic by which many leaders choose to forgo integrated institutions in favor of institutional alternatives that deliver less complete and less accurate information but provide political protection from bureaucratic punishment.

This chapter explores the origins and consequences of national security institution in India from 1947 to 2015. It first discusses the evolution of India’s institutions. It argues that the trade-off between good information and political security explains three major institutional changes: Nehru’s choice to abandon his inherited institutions in favor of fragmented ones that protected his plans to transform the domestic economy; the choice of post-Nehruvian leaders to shift toward siloed institutions that balanced continued threats from national security bureaucracies against new international security challenges from Pakistan and China; and Vajpayee’s choice to establish more integrated institutions as apprehensions about bureaucratic punishment lessened. The chapter then presents a medium-n analysis suggesting that India exhibited better crisis performance under integrated institutions than under siloed and fragmented institutions. Case studies tracing decision-making during the 1962 Sino–Indian War and the 2001-2002 Twin Peaks Crisis illustrate how these institutional changes affected the quality of information upon which Indian leaders based their crisis choices.