Bureaucratic Politics and Organizational Process Models

Abstract

Graham Allison’s Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1969) and Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971) introduced two new decision-making approaches—the bureaucratic politics model and the organizational process model—to explain the October 1962 confrontation between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Despite being the subject of significant criticism for nearly four decades, the models are enduring elements of the foreign policy analysis lexicon. The bureaucratic politics model, however, has generated and continues to attract far more attention than the organizational process model across a wide range of academic disciplines. The bureaucratic politics model embraces the perspective that foreign policy decisions are the product of political resultants or bargaining between individual leaders in government positions. These resultants emerge from a foreign policy process, characteristic of a competitive game, where multiple players holding different policy preferences struggle, compete, and bargain over the substance and conduct of policy. The policy positions taken by the decision makers are determined largely by their organizational roles. On the other hand, the organizational process model maintains that foreign policy actions are generated by organizational output, namely the behavior of large bureaucracies with parochial priorities and perceptions following standard operating procedures. Thus, foreign policy is the product of organizational output, namely the behavior of multiple bureaucracies with distinct responsibilities and interests following standard operating procedures.