The Bureaucratic Politics of Security Institution Reform

Abstract

The Bureaucratic Politics Model (BPM) is usually employed to explain crisis decision-making in US foreign policy. Proponents of the model argue, however, that its explanatory scope also encompasses non-crisis decision-making in domestic political issues in parliamentary systems. This paper takes up this claim and applies the BPM to the reform of the German Federal Criminal Police Office. In line with the BPM's predictions, the paper finds that the policy preferences of the key actors were indeed strongly influenced by their bureaucratic position and the outcome of the decision-making process was a compromise solution. However, the model cannot account for the impact of two non-executive institutions, that is, the Federal Constitutional Court and the Bundesrat, on the executive bargaining process. This finding suggests that the BPM could be an even better analytical tool if it were expanded to systematically incorporate the influence of non-bureaucratic actors into its framework.