Today’s Topics Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics

1. Today’s TopicsOrganizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics • Allison’s framework (Models 1-3). • Organizational process theory. • Bureaucratic politics theory.

2. Organizational Process Theory:Setting in Context • Allison article: shows differences among: • Realist or rationalist perspective (Model I); • Organizational process theory (Model II); and • Bureaucratic politics (Model III).

3. Organizational Process Theory:Setting in Context • Allison’s 3 models: • Model I: Rational Policy or Rational Actor Model. • Outcomes of international politics as rational choices of unified national governments. • States completely informed, utility-maximizing actors, and react strategically to events. • Obvious identification with realist and neoliberal approaches.

4. Organizational Process Theory:Setting in Context • Allison’s 3 models: • Model II: Organizational Process. • Ontology: Governments as “conglomerate of semi-feudal, loosely allied organizations”. • Causal argument: Standard operating procedures + imperfect information  government organizations  suboptimal or unintended policy outputs.

5. Organizational Process Theory: How do Organizations Work?(Allison Model II) • Primary responsibility for particular areas necessarily divided. • Several organizations within government acting at same time, only partially coordinated, to respond to problems.

6. Organizational Process Theory :How do Organizations Work?(Allison Model II) • Governments define alternatives through standard operating procedures (SOPs). • Each organization has limited set of SOPs. • Orgs “satisfice”: use first minimally acceptable SOP. • More complex organization, more it relies on SOPs. • Organizations slow to change SOPs to react to new situations.

7. Organizational Process Theory :Sagan’s Depiction of Organizational Failures • Theory of “normal accidents” (Perrow): Errors and accidents will be normal occurrence in complex and tightly-coupled systems. • “complexity”: how many interrelated branches of activity coming together to create outcome? • “coupling”: how much time available between steps to fix problems?

8. Organizational Process Theory :Classification of Organizational Systems/ Processes

9. Organizational Process Theory :Classification of Organizational Systems/ Processes • Nuclear weapons systems and nuclear war plans are examples of complex, tightly-coupled systems. • E.g. Organizational mistakes during Cuban Missile Crisis: • American U2 spy plane lost in Soviet airspace. • SAC loaded nukes and conducted scheduled missile test.

10. Bureaucratic Politics:(Allison Model III) • Bureaucratic politics: regularized bargaining among players positioned hierarchically within government. • Different from organizational process perspective: not routines or failures of systems.

11. Bureaucratic Politics:(Allison Model III) • Ontology: leaders of organizations within government are key actors, because occupy critical positions. • Causal argument: Outcomes result of bargaining among competitive actors, rather than outputs from limited organizational routines.

12. Bureaucratic Politics:(Allison Model III) • Overlap with organizational process theory: Each department or division will have its own biases derived from set of SOPs. • SOPs structure the game by pre-determining major players and how they can enter game.

13. Bureaucratic Politics:(Allison Model III) • “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” • Players prefer solutions that serve organization’s power, regardless of national security. • Air Force: air attack. • State Department: diplomatic negotiation. • Defense Department civilians: military action. • Military officers: don’t want to enter war they might lose; if attack, prefer preemptive.

14. Bureaucratic Politics:(Allison Model III) • For Allison, bureaucrats act in their organization’s interests, rather than for corporations or interest groups. • But bureaucrats’ views coloured by personal “baggage,” outside interests, level of ambition. • Here lobbyists or past careers can affect them.