Customer Reviews

Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (2nd Edition)

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A great number of books and articles has been published attempting to explore and explain the Cuban missile crisis that had brought the world to the brink of a thermonuclear world war. Allison and Zelikow, in Essence of Decision, explain the Cuban missile crisis through three different lenses, that is, The Rational Actor Paradigm, Organizational Behavior Paradigm and Governmental Politics Paradigm, each of which is based on a different set of assumptions, each of which has a distinct bundle of organizing concepts and, each of which brings different general/specific propositions for the issue under question. Allison and Zelikow investigate the Cuban missile crisis through the lenses of three models in turn by asking three simple questions:

1. Why did the Soviet Union decide to place offensive missiles in Cuba?
2. Why did the United States respond to the missile deployment with a blockade?
3. Why did the Soviet Union withdraw the missiles?

The analyst looking to Cuban missile crisis through the lens of "rational actor model" conceives of governmental action as a "choice" made by a unitary and rational nation or national government. In this model, national government is treated as if it is an "individual" identifying problem, producing solution alternatives and picking one of those alternatives up whose result would satisfy the expected utility function of the nation best based on the "purpose" of the nation. The rational actor model analyst generates hypotheses, for example, about why the Soviet Union decided to send nuclear missiles to Cuba: to defend Cuba, rectify the nuclear strategic balance, or provide an advantage in the confrontation over Berlin? The virtue of the model comes from its power of explanation especially in case it is able to expose the "purpose" of the nation/state. So all the puzzling pieces of the relevant issue under question are to be tied into a coherent and satisfactory story.

The rational actor model falls short of fully understanding of the issue under question in that it does not take account of other equally important considerations. Admittedly, the rational actor model neglects the organizational processes and capabilities that structure the issue or problem under question, and, limit or extend the policy alternatives available to "rational" policy actors. In final instant, it is manifest that policy executives have to decide policy alternative from the "menu" that current organizational technologies and capabilities write. In organizational behavior model, the analyst investigates, for example, the standard operating procedures (SOP) of government organizations in order to understand which policy alternatives are available to political actors and which one is chosen and why. So, the organizational behavior paradigm closes the gaps of the rational actor paradigm.

Finally, the governmental politics model conceives of governmental policy under question not as a rational actor choice or organizational output but as a "resultant" of bargaining along regular circuits among players positioned hierarchically within the government. In this model, the political actors and their intentions, positions and interests, their relative power, the action channels through which the political actors input and exert their influence, decision rules and similar matters stand to the fore in analysis.

The three models, according to Allison and Zelikow, are complementary to each other. "Model I fixes the broader context, the larger national patterns, and the shared images. Within this context, Model II illuminates the organizational routines that produce the information, options, and action. Model III focuses in greater detail on the individuals who constitute a government and the politics and procedures by which their competing perceptions and preferences are combined" (p. 392). Rather than giving different answers to the same question, each of the three models illuminates one corner of the issue and contributes to our understanding. By integrating the factors identified under each lens, the authors argue, explanations can be significantly strengthened.

The final chapter of the book in which the authors hypothetically demonstrate how the interaction of the factors identified under each lens can lead to a nuclear war should be perused by those who firmly believe that after the collapse of the Soviet Union there no longer exists the precipice of a nuclear slaughter.

Though I believe this book is a must-read for everybody (not necessary to mention all the fields), I recommend this masterpiece especially to students of strategic management who have read Strategy Safari by Mintzberg et al. (1998) for which I believe Essence of Decision will be an excellent field book and to students who have read Case Study Research by Robert Yin for which I think Essence of Decision will be a perfect workbook.

Overall, this book is a living example of a dedicated and illuminating scholarship. Highly recommended.

I read this book in the mid-1970's, but have re-read several times. The author reviews the history and basics of three decision-models: the rational actor, organizational, & bureaucratic. Then he takes each in turn and applies it to the Cuban Missile Crisis. So, one reads three separate case studies, all of the same event, but through different theoretical glasses. Events can be explained in more than one fashion. Humility is an asset to an analyst. My book shelves hold around 250 books, so some books are given away so new ones can be added. Allison's, Essence of Decision, has remained for a quarter century.

Historical Note: The Cuban Missile crisis happened in October, 1962. The Soviets had been installing medium range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Upon discovery, the Kennedy administration had to decide what to do and how to do it. Many believe that the actions between the US and the USSR during these 10 days in October are as close as we have ever come to a nuclear war.

I first read this book in my International Politics class in college almost ten years ago. It fascinated me then and it fascinates me now to read through Allison's three models. He peels away the layers of behavior and motivation with each model and, in doing so, he exposes the strengths and weaknesses of everyone involved--from Kennedy to Castro to Khrushchev. And every time, you learn something new, some important fact or angle that turns everything just a little on its head. Required reading for anyone interested in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also an excellent primer on the intricacies of decision-making. Still a very good read.

This book is Graham Allison's take on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he's far from the only author to try and tackle this event. What makes "Essence of Decision" different, however, is that Allison adopts no one, definitive answer to the "main questions" of the crisis, but rather offers three ways of interpreting the event, all with their merits and drawbacks.

Allison's main argument is that many foreign policy experts, laymen and experts alike, depend on "rational choice" theories. For an armchair analyst, using game theory or assuming one person is making all the decisions is indeed an easy way to explain the world. However, as Allison demonstrates, people simply don't work that way.

To fill this gap, Allison gives two alternate theories: a bureacratic-organization model (where information and decisions are limited by pre-existing structures) and a political process method (where those with close social links to the key decisionmakers have a decisive advantage). Allison makes a good case for these alternate theories, noting that one must discard a lot of facts to construct a "rational" model, and that, in his own words, anyone with a good imagination can construct a rational model (which, incidentally, violates the scientific law of falsifiability).

This book seems to be a deliberate attack on the "rational models" most academics use, which is its primary virtue. I myself first encountered it in a sociology class, as the basic theories Allison created to help explain the missile crisis are applicable to many things, from foreign policy to product marketing.

This book is not only the best I've seen concerning the Cuban missile crisis, but it also provides an excellent veiw of international policy making. Many other books concerning the crisis don't illustrate nearly as many implications that the various power centers had to deal with. It also gives an excellent portrayal of presidental decision making.

Venturing into big corporations is sometimes an obscure science. You do not understand how or why things get done. This book helps you understand the intricacies of organizations. It starts with the usual logical model, goes on elaborating until it develops a model, which does a better job explaining the "unexplainable" actions of organizations. The Cuban Missile Crises is the vehicle to illustrate all three models. The reading of the first edition was a bit dull, but got better in the second edition.

Reading "Essence of Decision" resonates with Kurosawa, or maybe Stoppard. We have a central story - one of the great non-events in human history, the moment when the Soviet Union and the United States "came eyeball to eyeball" (as Dean Rusk is said to have said) before someone blinked. We hear it three times: one, from the standpoint of the "rational actor;" second from the internal logic of organizations; and third, from the perspective of politics where people more or less rub along together.

It's an event that bears retelling and, with qualification, the device works. The upshot is that we get some insight into the missile crisis. But not at all incidentally, we get some insight into the academic study of politics (I resist calling it "political science"), and a whiff of what it might have to offer for our better understanding of the world.

Aside from the Kurusowa effect, there is another structural innovation. We have, in a sense, two books interleaved, like Faulkner's "Wild Palms." The even-numbered chapters tell (and retell) the basic story. The odd-numbered chapters offer a framework of "theory."

I suppose you might read just the even-numbered chapters - indeed the authors themselves suggest as much, though rather half-heartedly. And indeed, the odd-numbered chapters can be heavy going. One cannot help recalling the old canard about the sociologist as a person who gets a government research grant to find the bordello next door. You are tempted to say that their theory is what sophisticated people know anyway, and the clueless will probably never figure out.

But there is an answer to this dismissal. That is: most (or at least) a lot of history gets told from the standpoint of the "rational actor." A survey of the competing approaches makes it clear just what this approach leaves out. And if the polyphonic approach is so obviously superior to the single narrative line, then why have historians from Thucydides to Henry Kissinger been willing to do without it? One answer might be: for all their talents, they simply haven't learned the way to tell a story in any other way.

So on the whole, retelling works. But not, perhaps, as well as it might. Another reviewer has said that this isn't really a case to illustrate "organization" theory here because this is not a case that highlights organizations - rather, at least for the United States, the response to the Cuban missile crisis was the work of a small group of men, working together in close cooperation. There is some merit to this view: concededly, you do not get the clash of bull elephants that you might have got at another time when Defense makes war on State, and both work together to fend of Intelligence. But you get a taste of it: we find that the Joint Chiefs were most hospitable to an invasion; that State thought that maybe we could talk it through; and that John McCone from the CIA was the one person who most clearly anticipated the threat. Moreover, you see the "organization" problem in a somewhat different light, when you see how the President's orders were massaged or modified by the military (sometimes, even, within the military).

But perhaps in any event, I need not get too distracted by the framework. Along the way, there are any number of nuggets that stand pretty well on their own. I liked in particular, for instance, the discussion of the role of committee work. We tend to stick up our nose at any project done by committee. But, argue our authors, in World War II it was Churchill, high-handed as he was, who worked through committee-and virtually always followed the committee's advice. The "strong leader" who kept things close to his vest, was Hitler.

But more generally - I was already an adult at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, and I remember it well. Specifically, I remember how frightened were so many people in my surroundings. I wasn't that frightened; I figured that one way or another, we would rub along. In the end, of course, I was right - we did rub along. But I think in retrospect, it was I who was kidding myself and the Nervous Nellies who had the right attitude. We did rub along, but as Wellington said about the Battle of Waterloo, it was a near thing. I particularly like Robert Kennedy:

"The fourteen people [in the American inner circle] were very significant-bright, able, dedicated people, all of whom had the greatest affection for the U.S. ... If six of them had been President of the U.S., I think that the world might have been blown up."

[Final technical note: one or more of the other reviews appear to be discussing the first edition of this book. The (current) seocnd edition is not a mere cosmetic update, but substantially a new book].

I made a bit of a mistake when I read this book; I should have waited until I got a chance to pick up the second edition. The first edition is a little dated, both in examples and language, and Cuban Missile Crisis (CMC from here on out) experts would not doubt find plenty of out of date facts. However, for me, the point of the book was not to explain every facet of the CMC, but to use examples from the CMC to illustrate the different models of decision making. I won't go into details about the models (if you want a general overview check out the Wikipedia article on the book).

While "Essence of Decision" discusses decision making in a governmental context, I find that it is useful in explaining decisions many other contexts, including corporate decisions. I feel like the overall point is that no decision is made completely in the dark and no decision is made completely in the light. When trying to explain something like Enron or Countrywide, it is easy to demonize a few people but it is more important to realize that a lot of smaller decisions allowed these catastrophes to occur. Although "Essence of Decision" is limited to the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is easy to see examples of complex decision making on the news and at work every day. I found the book to be very helpful in understanding the inner-workings of everyday life and would highly recommend it to others interested in gaining a greater understanding of why things happen the way that they do.

This book uses the Cuban missile crisis to highlight the role that organizational politics plays in producing the policy goals we observe in real life. Allison's main argument is the organizational politics create an environment in which one person will not shape policy, but rather one organization will shape outcomes by identifying some goals as legitimate, and others as illegitimate. To add credibility to his analysis, Allison contrasts what would have occurred in this crisis if organizational politics were not the dominant force in producing these outcomes. As the conclusion of that exercise, we see that his view is very strong. We also see that organizations are powerful, so powerful the can overwhelm individual personalities.

I have never seen the different concepts of organizational behavior put into a books this clear.

A must-read for anyone who has to understand why organization end up doing what they do.

A must-read for anyone interested in the missile crisis.

The only nitpick is that I think the title is not chosen well. This book does so much more than what the title implies.