Political Science

Graham Tillett Allison was an American political scientist and a professor at John F. Kennedys school of government at Harvard University. He is distinguished for the contribution he made to the practical analysis of decision making in late 1960s and early 1970s. Most of his contributions became so useful in times of crisis. The book Remaking foreign policy The organizational connection which he wrote together with Peter Szanton and published in 1976 was widely used by the administration of President Jimmy Carter in making some foreign policies. From the year 1976, Graham Allison became a leading analyst of United States National Security and defense policy, with much emphasis on nuclear weapons and terrorism (Rosati, 2001).

Graham Allison proposed many models which can be used in decision making among them being rational actor model. Rational actor model was developed under various assumptions. National behavior can be explained as a balanced selection for particular aims under determinate situations. After comparing the choices available and deciding on the one to settle for, the choice made should be in a position to find the solution that capitalizes on the relative value of multiple aims. The decision made is then analyzed at personal level in premeditated interaction (Guzzini, 1998). Premeditated interaction ensures that value maximizing option in the social must take into account the interest of other parties. This will involve both considering other peoples choices and reacting to them. This model presumes that options and cost of actions are known except that all the details are not available or the calculus of the cost may not be wrong. The most important factor in this model is that the decision is made in a more rational manner, though the result of the actions must not come out to be the most rational way to make ends meet. Considering the then assumptions of psychological warfare, and the plan of ending the war, it was possibly coherent for the combined forces to destroy both Dresden and Tokyo with huge bombardments. With the current knowledge, this military strategy failed to attain the expected effect (Rosati, 2001).

Under rational actor model, a persons behavior must be a mirror image of their intentions. Behavior is considered to be constant and understandable. The explanatory appeal of this model is consequent of its logical consistency which posits one actor, only one rational value maximizing deed and combination of what an actor is intending to do together with the reasons of the motive (Rosati, 2001).

The models strengths originate from its assumptions that action contains more than simple purposive choice of a unitary agent. The value rationality adds to the idea of purpose is steadiness among goals and objectives comparative to a particular action. Consistency is the application of ideology in order to choose the most suitable option. Rationality on the other hand refers to constant, value maximizing choice within constraints (Guzzini, 1998).

There are other assumptions which set the possibilities and restrictions of the usefulness of the rational actor model in foreign policy decision making. The first assumption is that the less information of outside observers, the more they adopt this model for anticipating actions, or for display explanation.  This result into a trend to lean toward worst case analysis based on the most unfavorable assumptions of the other peoples behavior. The second assumption is that this model has a limited explanatory value. It can avail a summary of general tendencies through identifying the impact that the relative strategic benefit cost analysis had in the real behavior and also by concentrating on the aims in question.