Does Context Matter? Advisory Systems and the Management of the Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process

A critical component in the creation of foreign policy is the leader's choice of management style. Management style influences how the leader engages the policymaking process, who participates in the process, how information is processed, and how disagreements are resolved. The importance of these decisions has led practitioners and scholars alike to try to understand the differences between management styles, how they function, and their limitations in order to study how to improve the policy process. However, some of this research suffers from certain limitations, which raises some questions regarding the applicability of these explanations and their utility in explaining the policy process. Noticeable in the foreign policy analysis research on management style is a tendency to focus on security issues and to look at a single decision within a given administration. As Paul 't Hart (1997) argues, there needs to be more research that looks beyond a "snapshot" view of decisions, toward analyses that compare decisions by the same group in the same context. Equally important, there is also a need for more studies that undertake a longitudinal analysis of how leaders manage the foreign policy process across time. The advantage of extending the research on management styles and structures in these directions is that it will improve our understanding of "the interplay between institutional, political, situational, and idiosyncratic forces" that can influence the policy process ('t Hart 1997, 334). In short, a deeper analysis of management styles can produce a richer understanding of the policy process. One area that can contribute significantly to an improved understanding of the policy process is context. A focus on context, in particular, is necessary because presidents are subjected to different sets of pressures and actors when dealing with different types of issues. Issues that are of importance to domestic actors can potentially affect a president, as they must contend with the demands of important constituents or influential political actors. This study addresses some of these gaps in the literature by way of an examination of presidential management during two different yet contemporaneous foreign policy decisions. Overall, the study has two goals. The first is to identify whether there is consistency in management style in different issue domains and what, specifically, causes it to change. Is change simply a reflection of the president's expertise or interests, or are there conditions or characteristics associated with the issues that place pressure on the president to change? Comparing two decisions in a single administration will accomplish a second goal, which is to determine how sensitive the advisory system and its attendant processes are to context. Does a change in context alter the interaction among the members of the advisory system? If so, what are the circumstances that cause this to happen? What kinds of opportunities or constraints are created by a change in context that may affect policy deliberations? The purpose of the research is to address the conditions under which presidential management of the policy process changes. However, the study does not examine all of the possible management styles available to decision makers; instead, it presents an in-depth analysis of the collegial advisory system. The collegial management style has been identified as increasingly common among presidents, and it is considered a normative ideal because of the way in which it allows for open discussion and the evaluation of a full range of options, both of which contribute to "better" policy outcomes (George 1980; George and George 1998; Walcott and Hult 2005). This research anticipates that there should be variation in management style when there is a greater need for acceptability, meaning that in order for policy to be effective, it "must be acceptable to a minimum number of relevant groups" (Farnham 2004, 443). …