POL208Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Optio, Bounded Rationality, Preventive War
6 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
We are trying to seek to understand foreign policy decisions in an increasingly uncertain world. Foreign policy: the public policy of the state, implemented in the environment external to the state. The concrete steps that the officials of a state take with respect to events and situations abroad. Allison (1971) gives us three models that help us understand decision-making at the international level. Model three: the bureaucratic politics model: decisions or outcomes are the result of the process of competition or bargaining among bureaycratic units divergent perspectives, and may reflect compromises to satisfy competition between bureaucracies, leading to sub-optimal choices. State decisions would be the result of pulling and hauling between government agencies: critique: too simplistic and leaders can usually override government agencies. Assumes a unitary and rational state committed to identifying a problem, clarifying its goals, determining its policy options, analyzing those options in terms of costs and benefits, and selecting an optimal policy.
