IR 360 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Graham T. Allison, Crisis Management, Thomas Kuhn
1 May 2018
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A Typology of Crisis Management (how we organize our thinking on the subject)
POSC/IR 360
Unit One
What Is a Crisis?
• Graham Allison (best guy on understanding what a crisis is, wrote dissertation on CMC,
first real study on crisis management)
• Grave matter- it is a matter of life and death for a regime, country, or macroentity for
whom a great deal of people rely (existential threat to the international system)
• Small decision-making group (has to be handled by this) because a large group never
makes a decision (larger the group the less likely it is they’ll make a fast decision or a
decision at all)
• Needs to be in a narrow compressed group of key decision makers, or it is
nearly impossible to get a decision
• Time constraints- if you have a long time to make a decision, you do not really have a
crisis it is just a bad problem, there needs to be some kind of a time constraint
• Example: growing old is a problem, it will take us all, but there is not a time
constraint so it is not a crisis. A cancer with a specific time constraint is a
crisis
• The danger of groupthink (he invents the word)- groupthink represents the relative
pressure that becomes active within a group to reach a decision
• Not just within the group, but from a specific person within the group
• Dominance of a powerful personality takes over and steers the group
in one direction
• Decision-making in a crisis moment often means the surrender not to
the best idea, but to the most powerful personality in the room
• No one wants to speak truth to power once you’re in the inner circle of
decision making (that’s groupthink)
• What is Necessary and Sufficient?
• We reach a decision (that is what is sufficient) but we don’t push ourselves to
make the absolute best decisions-necessary decisions- (we frequently settle for
what is sufficient to get out of the room)
• The Golden Rule of Crisis Management- you will never have enough information, you
always want a little more, but at a certain point you always have to make a choice,
sometimes you simply have to make a decision
• I really need to make a decision, and I need to make the decision now, I don’t
have time to work with, I don’t have a lot of people I can call upon for opinions,
it’s really serious and I can’t ignore it…what do I want most? INFORMATION,
can make the best possible decision with the most information
• Information is usually the one variable that can be controlled
Heuristic Thinking
• What Is an Heurism?
• Any empirical or methodological way of modeling a particular phenomenon
• It usually has some sort of empirical data that backs it up
• Richard Spragens- heurism of trying to understand political change/crisis
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Crisis and perception of disorder- basically, things break down, and when they break
down we can’t go along with it any more (agreement that we cannot continue without
addressing the problem)
• Diagnosis- my ability to reach a conclusion about the cause of my problem
• Prescription- come up with a prescription to fix my problem
• Things don’t always work perfectly though
• Imaginative reconstruction- sometimes you have to amend or tinker with the
prescription to make sure it works (last minute gerrymander to make things work the
way they should)
• Doesn’t always work perfectly, so you come up with a band aid approach to
make it work
• Thomas Kuhn (he’s an actual scientist, not a social scientist) he wants to know how we
move from one thing to another (one understanding of the way things are to another)
• Paradigm- it works and no one questions it until it fails
• Crisis- things become out of wack and it can no longer be ignored, when it fails, we
have to decide what replaces it
• New Paradigm- replaces old, failed paradigm
• Applying Analytic and Heuristic Thinking to Crisis Studies
A More Complex Typology
• Allison’s Definition- classic and simple, begin with this (he’s the grandfather of all of
this thinking)
• Interstate Military Security Crises- other types of crises are out of the IR spectrum
• Why military? Because that’s what creates the grave problem (they get angry and
can blow things up)
• Foreign Policy Crises (different from international crises)
• International Crises (different from foreign policy crises)
• Natural Disasters
• National Emergencies
Three Assumptions about Crises
• Crises are destabilizing and thus dangerous
• They are just not good
• Systematic investigation of crises is possible at all levels
• It can be studied as an academic topic and be broken down
• Knowledge and study adds to understanding and so minimizes the danger of crises
• The more we study this the better off we are
• A Silver Rule for Crisis Management- I can never be sure that what I know is true, we
recognize that we do not have the full picture, and what we do have can often be skewed
and negatively impact our decision making (contaminated information is the acne of
decision making)
• The person who gets to you first often colors your perceptions and that can be
very difficult to change
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Foreign Policy Crises – Some Sample Approaches
1.Michael Brecher/Jonathan Wilkenfeld
• A threat to one or more basic values (description of a foreign policy crisis)
• Finite time for response
• Heightened probability of involvement in military hostilities
• There is a fundamental threat that cannot be ignored and after that is established,
you are compelled to act or suffer consequences (example: Obama red line in
Syria)
2. (Margaret and Charles) Hermann
• Threatens high priority goals of the decision making unit (description of a foreign policy
crisis)
• Decision making unit= people at the apex of the govt (controlling govt, leader,
etc)
• Restricted time- because if you have enough time to think you would make more
significant decisions
• Surprises the decisionmakers by its advent (they believe it has the element of surprise,
key element of surprise is what makes it a crisis)
• We can also not believe what we see which can make it a surprise as well
3. Glenn Snyder/Paul Diesing
• Dangerously high probability of war (description of a crisis)
• War from which there is no recovery
• An extrapolation: an alarmingly high probability of existential danger
• Not really a crisis unless war is really going to be terrible; unthinkable
consequences
• Existential threat- threat to existence/international realm
• Implicit in this definition is the introduction of WMD
Spillover Effects on Decisionmakers (ancillary (thing that follows but doesn’t necessarily have to
happen) consequences, not direct consequences from the decision to act)
• The more pressing the threat, the more likely war may occur and so the greater the stress
• Decision makers are pressed for time and are extremely stressed, and the more
stress you put on people the more likely they are to make poor decisions
• No one makes good decisions under immense pressure
• The more active and aggressive the threat to core values the less time perceived to
respond
• The more important the stakes are, the grimmer the threat, the more likely it feels
that I do not have adequate time (subjective observation)
• The more acute the time pressure the greater the likelihood of war and perception of the
threat
• Bad decision making
• An iron triangle between the three- feeds one into the other
International Crises When:
• Disruptive Interactions Change (intrude themselves into the way things are being
done…war, blocking of commerce, series of insurgent attacks, cyber attacks, etc)
• Change in type; not just one thing, require multiple different responses
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
A typology of crisis management (how we organize our thinking on the subject) Information, can make the best possible decision with the most information. Heuristic thinking: any empirical or methodological way of modeling a particular phenomenon. Because that"s what creates the grave problem (they get angry and can blow things up: foreign policy crises (different from international crises) International crises (different from foreign policy crises: natural disasters, national emergencies, crises are destabilizing and thus dangerous, they are just not good. Three assumptions about crises: systematic investigation of crises is possible at all levels. Implicit in this definition is the introduction of wmd. International crises when: disruptive interactions change (intrude themselves into the way things are being done war, blocking of commerce, series of insurgent attacks, cyber attacks, etc, change in type; not just one thing, require multiple different responses. The unified model (not an answer for crisis behavior, but tells us about crisis incidents-helps.
