官僚政治模式与美国外交决策研究方法

Bureaucratic Politics Model and Approaches to U.S.Foreign Policy-Making

20世纪50年代流行的分析美国外交决策的方法是理性行为者方法,这与当时国际关系理论领域里占主导地位的现实主义对理性的重视有关。1962年艾利森和霍尔珀林的《决策的本质》一书问世,带来了决策理论中的变革。1972年他们二人又在论文中正式提出了对理性行为者模式的替代方法——官僚政治模式。他们认为,理性行为者模式把政府组织的和政治的复杂性简化成为一个单一的行为者,而忽略了官僚体制的存在。事实上,政府并不是统一的、理性的计算单位,而是由那些具有不同利益、持不同政策观点的组织和个人所组成,它们之间相互竞争以影响决策。政府决策是集团的博弈,而不是个人的活动;是一个政治过程,而不是一个智力和理性过程。作者还阐述了官僚政治模式的发展过程和特点、对它的批评与修正以及美国总统权力与官僚政治的关系等,其结论是,与决策理论中的其他方法相比,官僚政治模式是更适用于分析美国外交决策的方法。

The most popular approach to the U.S.foreign-policy making in 1950s was the Rational Actor Model.It reflected that fact that at that time the dominant theory in international relations was realism,in which the key concept was ration.The born of Allison and Zelikow's book the Essence of Decision brought an innovation in the theories of foreign-policy making.The two authors later formally developed an alternative model to the Rational Actor Model-the Bureaucratic Politics Model in their article 'Bureaucratic Politics:A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications' in 1972.They believe that the Rational Actor Model reduces the organizational and political complications of government to the simplification of a single actor,and ignores the existence of bureaucratic institutions.In fact,a government is not unified a calculating unite,but rather a conglomerate of organizations and individuals,who have different interests and varies of views in governmental policy.They compete for affecting governmental decisions.Usually,the governmental policy-making is a group game,but not an individual activity;is a political process,but not an intellectual and rational process.This essay also illustrates the development process and characteristics of the Bureaucratic Politics Model,the criticism and revisions of the model,and the relations between presidential power and bureaucratic politics.The conclusion is that compared with other approaches,Bureaucratic Politics Model is an approach which is more applicable to the analysis of the U.S.foreign policy-making process.