Rational models
are often criticized for not taking into account individual differences. In my
personal opinion that is one of the major drawbacks of them. You simply cannot
fit every decision by each individual in a simple, uniform box because human
thinking and behaviour are far more complex and complicated. This was the
biggest reason why I found this piece "Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm
and Some Policy Implications," by Graham Allison and Morton Halperin extremely
interesting. It seemed to me that the authors recognized this issue and thus
came up with this new bureaucratic political paradigm model in which there are
multiple players which distinct individual interests rather than a single one
within one nation itself. Their interests and thus decisions and actions can
vary and even be antagonistic even though they are working for one nation
together. There are levels of the decision making and players in each level
have their own interests, this is a good explanatory reasoning as to why some
actions are so far off from what the intended goals were within the system. The
essay recognizes that this is due to political factors and interests within the
system which academia rarely recognizes and works on.
Another fascinating point for me was trying
to access why the authors felt the need for a different model to work out how
nations operate in the international system. Why view the nation differently
now? I could reason this by looking at how the international structure of the
world has changed. Prior to the last few centuries, there were no nation states.
Nation states like they are today in their full bureaucratic glory did not
exist. Previously, the interests of a nation were in fact the interests of one
individual or organization like despots and his/her administration system. But
today the state is defined on a bureaucratic level, its inner workings based on
the interactions and interests of multiple groups/departments rather than just
one.
All in all the essay has significant value in
my opinion because it added something new to the domain, did it very well with
clearly defined terms with good theoretical models and sufficient examples of
real life applications.
I agree that this piece is a valuable contribution to our understanding of domestic political decision making. One point that I would modify from your statements is on the level of complexity of bureaucracies in modern nation states. You're right that bureaucracies now are considerably more elaborate than at any other time in history, but bureaucracies have always existed since the first city-states were established. In fact, the great empires of the ancient world were great because of their bureaucratic competence, as can be seen from the time of Alexander the Great to the time of the Ottomans.
ReplyDeleteI stand corrected. But don't you think that the argument still stands because of the sheer magnitude of today's bureaucracies and the level of institutionalisation of the state? There are far more players, interests, action channels today than there were many centuries ago.
DeleteOf course I agree. I just wanted to point out that this has also been the case if you examine the historical record. In fact, the strongest empires were the ones with the most effective bureaucracies. Hence why Rome, the UK, and the Ottomans were so strong. And if you look at Chinese history, this is why the Ming dynasty was able to reach an apogee in power and influence.
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