Plan for Today: Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics

1. Plan for Today:Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics • Finish introducing decisionmaking approaches. • Principles and case examples of: • Organizational process theory. • Bureaucratic politics theory.

2. Decisionmaking Approaches:Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics

3. Decisionmaking Approaches:Limits to Rationality • Personality disorders: decisionmakers may be nuts!! • E.g. Saddam Hussein as an egomaniac. George W. Bush as beholden to father or evangelical fanatic.

4. Decisionmaking Approaches:Limits to Rationality • Human cognition is limited. • Human beings imperfect and biased in processing information. • Examples: • Prospect theory: people hate losses more than like gains. • Jervis: People overestimate extent to which others’ actions are a response to them.

5. Decisionmaking Approaches:Limits to Rationality • Huge complexity of decisions: parceled out to complex organizations. • Organizations act according to preset repertoires. • Organizations occupied by ambitious individuals.

6. Decisionmaking ApproachesTwo Branches of Theory • Organizational process theory. Focuses on the processes at work through standard operating procedures in government and even weapons systems. • Bureaucratic politics. Focuses on the clash among bureaucratic actors with conflicting interests.

7. 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). (Models II & III are decisionmaking approaches)

8. Organizational Process Theory:Setting in Context • 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.

9. Organizational Process Theory:Setting in Context • 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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?

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

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. Bureaucratic Clash over Iraq vs Ideologues & oil interests? Dept. of State – diplomatic “doves” & Military – only invade if can win Dept. of Defense Civilians – gung ho hawks

21. Personal Biases in Model III(Dick Cheney and Iraqi Oil)