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.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0043887100019663

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

Scholars of foreign policy-making have concentrated on how the most powerful domestic actors influence foreign policy and have largely ignored the influence of less powerful, minority actors. This ...

Power Politics in Foreign Policy: The Influence of Bureaucratic Minorities

Editor's Note: Unlike previous essay reviews in this journal, this review is a symposium with a number of different experts reflecting on governmental politics from a variety of perspectives. Eric Stern and Bertjan Verbeek both organized and have served as editors of the symposium. They wrote the introduction and conclusion to the piece. The various authors represent three different disciplines—political science, psychology, and public administration—and come from four countries. Several are involved in the application of this knowledge in collaboration with a government agency. All are concerned with where research on governmental politics has been and where it can and should go in the future.

Whither the Study of Governmental Politics in Foreign Policymaking

Allison and the Cuban Missile Crisis: A Review of the Bureaucratic Politics Model of Foreign Policy Decision-Making:

Underlying the analyses of Snyder, Brecher, and the Sprouts is a common contention regarding the relationship between environmental influences and foreign policy decisions: that environmental factors influence foreign policy decisions neither invariably nor directly, but only insofar as they affect or are mediated through the perceptions and attitudes of relevant decision makers. With regard to this claim, this paper suggests that (1) the criticisms Zinnes has directed against the Sprouts' formulation of this thesis are irrelevant or unconvincing; (2) close examination of their respective arguments reveals certain significant differences between Snyder and Brecher on the one hand, and the Sprouts on the other; and (3) the relationship between environmental factors, decision makers' perceptions of these factors, and state decisions may be a good deal more complex than supposed either by Snyder or Brecher, or by the Sprouts, and that environmental factors may play a larger role in this relationship than they each suppose.

Foreign Policy Decision-Making and the EnvironmentThe Claims of Snyder, Brecher, and the Sprouts

Although widely commended as a “path-breaking” and “sophisticated” contribution to the literature on how to study international relations, Allison's Essence of Decision is plagued by inconsistencies and contradictions not unlike those which mar the decisionmaking framework presented by Snyder and his associates almost twenty years earlier. These problems can be summarized usefully in terms of the proverbial tension between “scope” and “objectivity.” The aim of this paper is to illuminate these problems by examining Snyder's and Allison's frameworks in terms of three interrelated categories: (a) their general conceptions of decision makers and decision-making, (b) their research strategies, and (c) the classification systems with which they propose to work.

Miriam Steiner

Papers

The Elusive Essence of DecisionA Critical Comparison of Allison's and Snyder's Decision-Making Approaches