1. HOW AND WHY DOES THE BUREAUCRACY SHAPE USFP?
What role should unelected officials have in USFP?

2. WHY DON’T GOVERNMENTS RATIONALLY MAKE USFP AND BUREARUCRACIES JUST IMPLEMENT THOSE DECISIONS ?
Graham Allison’s 3 models of US/USSR decisionmakign in the Cuban Missile Crisis: Rationality, organizational process, and bureaucratic politics
Leaders all problems face:
Tardy problem recognition: Much better at seeing current problems than anticipating them; we discount future harm
Information acquisition problems: selective interpretation, cultural lenses/biases & satisficing for example
Information processing problems: misapplying history,, group think, risk strategies
Democracies especially undermine rational decisionmaking: Rapid turnover at the top makes for lots of novice decision makers… Hence the advent of the JFK School of Public Policy

3. How do Organizations and Processes shape USFP?
Why bureaucracies exist in all modern states?
How do repertoires & SOPs impact issues
Why do we mostly focus on problem directed searches
Organizational learning and change… very hard
Uncertainty avoidance is bad with people and worst with institutions
Limited flexibility and incremental changes are inherent to large bureaucracies (notice that we divided defense up)

4. HOW Bureaucratic politics IMPACT usfp?
Players and political capital
Parochial priorities and issues: Empire building
Interests, stakes and future power: Where you stand is where you sit
Internal vs. external orientations
Conformity and secrecy
Deference to hierarchy and tradition
Consequences of Bur. politics
Resistance to change
Sabotage of presidential and other bur. Initiatives
Iron triangles