Session 8: “It is always just the state”

Graham T. Allison, in his article “Bureaucratic Politics” differentiates between Model one and what he calls the Bureaucratic Politics model. According to his argument, Model one which takes a rather simplistic approach when compared to the Bureaucratic model, assumes states as individual actors who take action according to their interests and information readily available. However, Graham points out that the state consists of a number of actors who have their own interests and all of them should be taken into consideration in a more holistic approach under the Bureaucratic Politics model.

Even though I agree with the fact that the new model proposed takes a more holistic approach taking into account interests of various actors within a state, however it is not always the case that the final decisions are made keeping everyone’s interests in mind. “The state always has the final call”. And by the state here I mean the government in power. The government will always do what it thinks is best for its citizens and the state itself. Which by the way might be against general public opinion. A good example of this is United States involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Focusing more in Iraq, the general American public opinion was that United States shouldn’t have done what it did. This shows how the “state” thought it was necessary to take whatever action and did so disregarding the public opinion.

Now that I have made that clear, the model itself tries to explain the actions of the state in a much better way. Obviously, if you take into consideration all the major\minor actors with in a state and their interests, it will give you a better idea of why certain actions are taken.