Structures, Processes, and Communication in the Transformation of the Carter Administration’s Foreign Policy

Competition, Conflict, and Conformity: Foreign Policy Making in the First Year of the Trump Presidency

“…Initially modeled on the Kennedy administration’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis, this model has been referenced on numerous occasions for its alleged benefits to foreign policy decision making (Bose ). The model has since been associated with Presidents Lyndon Johnson (Pfiffner ; Hess ), Jimmy Carter (Moens ; Da Vinha ), George H. W. Bush (Snow and Haney ), Bill Clinton (Mitchell ; Snow and Haney ), and Barack Obama (Rothkopf ; Hook ; Snow and Haney ). The collegial model is essentially characterized by the following distinctive features: Advisors function as a problem‐solving team and are incentivized to openly air and discuss their differing views; Policy discussions are kept informal enough to encourage forthright discussions of all the information and the competing ideas and proposals; Advisors are encouraged to act as policy generalists rather than functional experts; Information flows into the problem‐solving team from multiple sources in the bureaucracy and is not subject to individual filters; The president acts as a magistrate who is directly exposed to the competing arguments and proposals of the different policy advocates; The president occasionally allocates overlapping assignments and will occasionally seek alternative sources of advice from subordinates. …”

“…Moreover, presidential advisory systems evolve over time. Research on multiple presidential administrations has demonstrated that the relationships between presidents and their advisors change over the course of their presidencies (see Da Vinha ; Link ; Newmann ; Stern and Sundelius ).…”