Foreign Policy Analysis and Global Governance

Foreign policy analysis emerged as a subfield seeking to open up the "black box" of the unitary rational state assumed by much of realist and liberal theory, examining instead the actual processes, actors, and organizations through which foreign policy decisions are made. Graham Allison's Essence of Decision, published in 1971 and revised with Philip Zelikow in 1999, used the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to compare three distinct models of explanation: the "rational actor" model treating the state as a single unified decision-maker weighing costs and benefits, the "organizational process" model explaining outcomes as the outputs of standard operating procedures within large bureaucracies, and the "bureaucratic politics" model, which explains decisions as the outcome of bargaining among competing officials with their own interests, captured in Allison's own phrase that "where you stand depends on where you sit."