Saturday, February 21, 2015

Session 8: A pattern behind Government's Actions

      Alison and Halperin in their paper "Bureaucratic Politics" analyze the scenarios and the influential part of a state bureaucracy in development of that state's "National Security Plan' which further effects that country's foreign policy. They give an attempt to explain how different policy makers, people at various positions in government and the not so important members of the decision making process effect the actions of a government and the consequences of those actions define the practicability of those actions.
   
      Government stances an various high or low level issues effect its foreign policy. For me, the essence of a strong democracy is that although the responsibility of the consequence of the final decision made by government depends on government itself, but the extent to which different players are involved in that decision making process, from higher rank to the lower one is profound, how the local representation invokes a law maker to his stance and how an organization's domestic needs make it influence that decision. Nevertheless, the involvement of these players are often motivated by certain 'interests'. Moreover, it also depends on the rank and position of a certain individual in the decision making process regarding how he handles the issue. Like, a military official give his perspective favoring ground realities while a diplomat deals with it keeping in mind his government interests and as in many cases, gave a decision which will have a suitable outcome for his political career.

      Authors also tries to develop an analogy between the actions of a state and its effect on other states as two competing and purposive individuals. Like two individuals, one persons actions will matter to the other if they are effecting him in one or other way. Similarly, in a country's politics, decision makers interests regarding another country will develop if that country's actions have some influence on it. In that case, individuals in the effected state will find more reasons to support their stance or interests but again, their stance will be generalized for that country's politics mainly.     

3 comments:

  1. I agree with author that the policy-making process described by Graham and Morton implies the democratic structure and they write that their observational focus is American government and that this model can be extended to other industrialized nations as well.

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  2. Examining how different people play a role in developing - and then implementing - policy is valuable, especially when we think about how policies end up in place.

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    1. Yes Naush, and this is one of the reason why we need to make our people aware of there surroundings (political scenaireo) and make them to believe that although they are not directly involve in politics but still can play there part.

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