The Case for Multiple Advocacy in Making Foreign Policy

Abstract

This paper discusses prescriptive theories of policy making in complex organizations with particular reference to foreign policy making in the Executive Branch. Instead of utilizing centralized management practices to discourage or neutralize internal disagreements over policy, an executive can use a multiple advocacy model to harness diversity of views and interests in the interest of rational policy making. Diversity is also given scope in "bureaucratic politics" and "partisan mutual adjustment," but in contrast to these unregulated pluralistic systems, multiple advocacy requires management to create the basis for structured, balanced debate among policy advocates drawn from different parts of the organization (or, as necessary, from outside the organization). Multiple advocacy, therefore, is a "mixed system" that combines elements of a centralized management model with certain features of pluralistic and participatory systems.