MPA 834Winter 2012:

Defence Decision-making

AimTo examine the relationship between policy and the defence administrative structure that determines national defence outcomes in Canada. In other words, to look at ‘who decides what and how they do so’ and why it matters to national defence.

William Jenkins defines public policy as:

“a set of inter-related decisions taken by a

political actor or group of actors concerning

the selection of goals and the means of

achieving them within a specific situation

where these decisions should, in principle, be

within the power of these actors to achieve.”

The Decision Making StructurePolicy is decided within defined structures composed of:

Actors with specific degrees of authority

The Organization that join the actors

The Decision-making process employed.

Defence Policy. … is the product of sets of decisions concerning inter-related national defence goals and the means of achieving them taken by political, military, and public service actors working in a defined organization employing a dynamic formal and informal (but regularized) decision making process.

How do actors decide between choices?

Rational Actor Model

Organizational Process Model

Bureaucratic Politics Model

Rational Actor ModelAccording to this model actors attempt to

discover the most rational answer to a policy problem and to act on it.

Policy, therefore, can be explained as free of prejudice, unitary, centrally controlled, completely informed, and value maximizing.

Organizational Process Model“… deliberate choices and more as outputs

of large organizations functioning according to standard patterns of behaviour”.

Policy, therefore, can be explained in organizational terms: i.e. organizational ‘tendencies,’ interests, and welfare.

Bureaucratic Politics Modelpolicy is determined in a ‘market’ “… by bargaining along regularized circuits among actors in organizations”. Policy, therefore, reflects the outcome of a struggle between individuals and organizations or bureaus and it is essentially political – the politics of groups and their interests. 

From Whence Comes Policy?

What are the sources of policy?

What generates the so-called ‘policy process’?

What sustains some policies and defeats extant policies?

Four Types of Ideas

World Views

Principled beliefs

Causal beliefs

Essentially contested beliefs

World Views… deeply embedded concepts in the culture

that affect modes of thought and public discourse.

Such powerful cultural ideas as religious maxims and political ideas such as individual liberty, equity, national sovereignty, and ethnical superiority are types of “world views”.

Principled Beliefs… ideas that specify criteria for judging right

from wrong; the just act from the unjust act.

Such an ideas, often expressed in law, rules, and norms, changes policy once it has wide political support and a measurable criterion for implementation.

Causal BeliefsPositive and negative ideas about cause and

effect

They derive their power from the shared consensus of elites or authority figures like politicians, generals, religious leaders, teachers, and rock stars.

Casual beliefs get their power to change policies from the size of the consensus behind them.

Essentially Contested Concepts“Essentially contested concepts involve

widespread agreement on a concept (e.g., "fairness"), but not on the best realization thereof.”

They are “… concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users."

They are disputes that “… cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone "

Contested Ideas as PerceptionsPerceptions … “the way something is

regarded, understood, or interpreted.”

“… aware of something through the senses.”

Perceptions may be false indicators of reality and even idiotic, but they can be powerful political motivators.

The governing modelIdeas Structure Policies and

Outcomes     Actors with

authorityOrganizations which connect

themDecision making

processes

   

MPA 834Policy is the product of sets of decisions concerning inter-

related national defence goals and the means of achieving them taken by political, military, and public service actors working in a defined organization employing a dynamic formal and informal (but regularized) decision making process.

MPA 834: Let’s have fun watching the dynamics of structure and policy in matters of Canada’s national defence.