SE 532 ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS AND GOVERNMENTAL POLITICS MODELS

ACSC 17 NOV 97

PURPOSE: The purpose of this lesson is to expose you to two new models that help explain how organizations and political entities influence our national strategy and the behavior of national governments in formulating policy. This lesson focuses on the Organizational Process Model and the Bureaucratic Politics Model.

LESSON OUTLINE:

Thesis: The concepts that actors are internally monolithic, have realistic objectives, and make rational choices to attain these objectives may be too simplistic to explain the policy and their subsequent behavior. The Organizational Process and Governmental Politics models examine the organizations and politics that drive policies. These models may provide further insight on the policies and actions of actors.

Main Point I: Allison's organizational process model is built on the premise that an actor's behavior is seen "less as deliberate choices and more as outputs of large organizations functioning according to standard patterns of behavior."

a. Governments are composed of several large organizations.
b. Problems are "factored" and given to organizations with "fractionated" power.
c. Programmed character, "standard operating procedures," of the organization determines the action.
d. Control of this process runs in to problem of decentralized responsibility versus coordination of effort.

Main Point II: Allison's governmental politics model is built on the premise that an actor's behavior emerges from decisions that are based on "players who make government decisions not by a single rational choice but by the pulling and hauling that is politics."

a. Political players normally "occupy critical positions" or may even be "ad hoc players" such as congressional power brokers or media personalities.
b. Problems are perceived and acted upon in accordance with "parochial priorities" such as party interests, stakes, media perception and power.
c. "Action channels" are the groups of people politically chosen to work the issue.
d. Final actions are a "collage composed of individual acts, outcomes of major & minor games &foulups."

LESSON INTEGRATION & RATIONALE: Provides alternative views on the drivers behind US policy and application of power; designed to provide a perspective different from the SE 531 policy process lesson. As we look at the US National Security Strategy, we should be able to spot the influences that organizations and political entities have on our strategy. We may even be able to predict what our future strategy will be.

SE COURSE OBJECTIVES:

Comprehend the characteristics of the contemporary strategic environment.

Comprehend different conceptual frameworks which help us analyze the nature of the strategic environment.

Understand major regional issues and relationships shaping the strategic environment.

LESSON OBJECTIVES:

532.1 Comprehend the organizational process model. (Deals with Organizational Outputs)

532.11 Recognize how the behavior of organizations can create policy.

Allison's organizational process model is built on the premise that an actor's behavior is seen "less as deliberate choices and more as outputs of large organizations functioning according to standard patterns of behavior." Although the control element makes the final decision, government behavior actually reflects the output of the different government organizations. that a "government" consists of a conglomerate of semifeudal, loosely allied organizations, each with a substantial life of its own. Government leaders do sit formally, and to some extent in fact, on top of this conglomerate. But governments perceive problems through their organizational sensors. Governments define alternatives and estimate consequences as organizations process information. Governments act as these organizations enact routines. Government leaders' decisions trigger organizational routines. Government leaders can trim the edges of this output and exercise some choice in combining outputs. But the mass of behavior is determined by previously established procedures. Existing organizational routines for employing present physical capabilities constitute the effective options open to government leaders confronted with any problem. Government behavior can be understood less as deliberate choices of leaders and more as outputs of large organizations functioning according to standard patterns of behavior.

To be responsive to a broad spectrum of problems, governments consist of large organizations among which primary responsibility for particular areas is divided. Each organization attends to a special set of problems and acts in quasi-independence on these problems. But few important problems fall exclusively within the domain of a single organization. Thus government behavior relevant to any important problem reflects the independent output of several organizations, partially coordinated by government leaders. Government leaders can substantially disturb, but not substantially control, the behavior of these organizations.

At any given time, a government consists of existing organizations, each with a fixed set of standard operating procedures and program. The behavior of these organizations-and consequently of the government-relevant to an issue in any particular instance is, therefore, determined primarily by routines established in these organizations prior to that instance

532.12 Describe the relationship between an organization's standard operating procedure and the actual application of power.

To perform complex routines, the behavior of large numbers of individuals must be coordinated. Coordination requires standard operating procedures: rules according to which things are done. Assured capability for reliable performance of action that depends upon the behavior of hundreds of persons requires established programs. Indeed, if the eleven members of a football team are to perform adequately on any particular down, each player must not "do what he thinks needs to be done" or "do what the quarterback tells him to do." Rather, each player must perform the maneuvers specified by a previously established play which the quarterback has simply called in this situation.

The happenings of international politics are, in three critical senses, outputs of organizational processes. The actual occurrences are organizational outputs. Organizational outputs structure the situation within the narrow constraints of which leaders must contribute their decision concerning an issue. Outputs raise the problem, provide the information, and make the initial moves that color the face of the issue that is turned to the leaders. As Theodore Sorensen has observed: "Presidents rarely, if ever, make decisions-particularly in foreign affairs-in the sense of writing their conclusions on a clean slate.… The basic decisions, which confine their choices, have all too often been previously made." If one understands the structure of the situation and the face of the issue-which are determined by the organizational outputs-the formal choice of the leaders is frequently anticlimactic.

532.2 Comprehend the governmental (bureaucratic) politics model. (Process of Bargaining Games) (see Main Point II, too)

The leaders who sit on top of organizations are not a monolithic group. Rather, each is, in his own right, a player in a central, competitive game. The name of the game is bureaucratic politics: bargaining along regularized channels among players positioned hierarchically within the government. Government behavior can thus be understood, according to a third conceptual model not as organizational outputs, but as outcomes of bargaining games. In contrast with model I, the bureaucratic politics model sees no unitary actor but rather many actors as players, who focus not on a single strategic issue but on many diverse intranational problems as well, in terms of no consistent set of strategic objectives but rather according to various conceptions of national, organizational, and personal goals, making government decisions not by rational choice but by the pulling and hauling that is politics.

The apparatus of each national government constitutes a complex arena for the intranational game. Political leaders at the top of this apparatus plus the men who occupy positions on top of the critical organizations form the circle of central players. Ascendancy to this circle assures some independent standing. The necessary decentralization of decisions required for action on the broad range of foreign policy problems guarantees that each player has considerable discretion. Thus power is shared.

532.21 Explain how political deals and disagreements can create policy.

Men share power. Men differ concerning what must be done. The differences matter. This milieu necessitates that policy be resolved by politics. What the nation does is sometimes the result of the triumph of one group over others. More often, however, different groups pulling in different directions yield a resultant distinct from what anyone intended. What moves the chess pieces is not simply the reasons which support a course of action, nor the routines of organizations which enact an alternative, but the power and skill of proponents and opponents of the action in question.

This characterization captures the thrust of the bureaucratic politics orientation. If problems of foreign policy arose as discreet issues, and decisions were determined one game at a time, this account would suffice. But most issues (e.g., Vietnam or the proliferation of nuclear weapons) emerge piecemeal, over time, one lump in one context, a second in another. Hundreds of issues compete for players' attention every day. Each player is forced to fix upon his issues for that day, fight them on their own terms, and rush on to the next. Thus the character of emerging issues and the pace at which the game is played converge to yield government decisions and actions as collages. Choices by one player, outcomes of minor games, outcomes of central games, and foul-ups-these pieces, when stuck to the same canvas, constitute government behavior relevant to an issue.

The decisions and actions of governments are essentially intranational political outcomes: Outcomes in the sense that what happens is not chosen as a solution to a problem but rather results from compromise, coalition, competition, and confusion among government officials who see different faces of an issue; political in the sense that the activity from which the outcomes emerge is best characterized as bargaining. Following Wittgenstein's use of the concept of a "game," national behavior in international affairs can be conceived as outcomes of intricate and subtle, simultaneous, overlapping games among players located in positions, the hierarchical arrangement of which constitutes the government. These games proceed neither at random nor at leisure. Regular channels structure the game. Deadlines force issues to the attention of busy players. The moves in the chess game are thus to be explained in terms of the bargaining among players with separate and unequal power over particular pieces and with separable objectives in distinguishable subgames.

THE EXAMPLE given is the Cuba Missile crisis and the political deals and disagreements among the decision makers for President Kennedy which led to his final decision of blockade for the Cuban missile crisis vs air strike. Much disagreement around the discovery of missiles and over the retaliation erupted between the President's advisors. The process by which the blockade emerged is a story of the most subtle and intricate probing, pulling, hauling, leading, guiding, and spurring. Reconstruction of this process can only be tentative. Initially the President and most of his advisers wanted the clean, surgical, air strike. On the first day of the crisis, the President mentioned only two alternatives: "I suppose the alternatives are to go in by air and wipe them out, or to take other steps to render them inoperable." At the end of the week a sizable minority still favored an air strike. As Robert Kennedy recalled: "The fourteen people involved were very significant…. If six of them had been President of the US, I think that the world might have been blown up." What prevented the air strike was a fortuitous coincidence of a number of factors-the absence of any one of which might have permitted that option to prevail.

532.22 Describe the relationship between an action channel and the actual application of power.

Action channels are politically chosen to work the issue. Action channels play a critical role in formulating government policy by regulating the political bargaining process and by determining "who's got the action."

Action channels research and work the issues then bargain their information to the final decision maker.

Example: Cuban Missile crisis: Action channels worked two sides of the resoponse actions to Russian missiles in Cuba.

One action channel: McNamara's vision of holocaust set him firmly against the air strike McNamara realized that the name of his deputy Gilpatric , and the Secretary of Defense-whose department had the action, whose reputation in the Cabinet was unequaled, in whom the President demonstrated full confidence-marshalled the arguments for the blockade. McNamara presented his argument for the blockade. Robert Kennedy and Sorensen had joined McNamara. A powerful coalition of the advisers in whom the President had the greatest confidence, and with whom his style was most compatible, had emerged.

Second action channel: the coalition that had formed behind the President's initial preference who supported the air strike-the chiefs, McCone, Rusk, Nitze, and Acheson. Air strike simply could not be surgical. After a day of prodding and questioning, the Air Force had asserted that it could not guarantee the success of a surgical air strike limited to the missiles alone.

A coalition, including the President, thus emerged from the President's initial decision that something had to be done; McNamara, Robert Kennedy, and Sorensen's resistance to the air strike; incompatibility between the President and the air strike advocates; and an inaccurate piece of information.

The media and elections also influence inputs into specific issues and deals.

READINGS: Allison, Graham T., "Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis"

The reading discusses the Cuban Missile crisis. The article was written in 1969 in an effort to understand the processes at work which lead both governments to the crisis. It analyzes the decisions and decision making of governments and the outcomes of those decisions.

READING RATIONALE: Allison discusses three models that can describe the behavior of an actor. The rational actor model is a commonly used baseline. However, the organizational process model and the governmental politics model follow the thesis that actors are not monolithic entities. Internal examination is essential to analyzing the policies and subsequent behaviors of the actors.