Session 8 - Bureaucratic politics model

Allison and Halperin present a comprehensive account of the bureaucratic politics model which explains why governments act the way they do, who are the main players involved in major decisions and how actors bargain and negotiate that leads them to take certain actions. They emphasize that decisions are not the product of a single actor and its interests, but rather it is a consequence of compromise and negotiation between various actors. The reading assesses the decisions and actions of the governments of the US and USSR during the cold war. While going through the article, I was constantly reminded of George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ because the story revolved around the steady growth of the bureaucracy of the pigs. Furthermore, the satirical work by Orwell is depictive of the bureaucracy during the Stalinist regime.

Even though Orwell presents the bureaucracy in a negative light, some points made by Allison and Halperin can be applied to the story. For instance, the authors talk about senior players and junior players. They say that senior players are the major political figures who ‘dominate in decision games’ and junior players are ‘charged with carrying out the decision’. Napoleon and the pigs can be seen as the senior players in the story who control the decision making process at the farm. Squealer and the dogs used by the pigs for protection can be seen as the junior players. Squealer was the junior player who carried the message of the pigs to the rest of the farm and made sure they were convinced of the decision and implemented it. The dogs were used to infuse terror in the hearts of the animals to ensure that none of them disobeyed the final decision taken by the senior players.