Logic, Politics and Foreign Policy Processes: A Critique of the Bureaucratic Politics Model

S OCIOLOGISTS of academic life might find a useful case study in the ascendancy of the 'bureaucratic politics model' as a source of explanations for writers in international politics. It has now become common for such writers to acknowledge the existence of domestic political factors by reference to this model; a creation usually credited to Graham Allison and Morton Halperin.' It is taken to be validated every time aspects of an international event can be partially explained by a lobbying air force, an ambitious ambassador, an elitist foreign office, a campaigning politician or a devious intelligence agency. Sociologists examining this phenomenon might well look to, a number of factors: the widespread cynicism about the! formation of foreign policy encouraged by the Vietnam debacle; the belief held by some American officials that other governments might be manipulated by playing off their intemal factions against each other; and the existence of a large number of former bureaucratic practitioners in university departments of government after the departure of the Johnson Administration. The model has been presented as an analytical breakthrough that recognises a critical variable in the determination of policy that has hitherto been neglected by most analysts. The reason for this neglect is detected in the widespread adoption of an alternative model which has: as its central feature the exclusion of this critical variable. At the start of his book Allison offers the following initial proposition: