Becoming a Bureaucrat in the Midst of Changing Foreign Policy Priorities

• In Event: Elites, Psychology, and Foreign Policy

Abstract

The politicization of foreign policy-making through popular support in international issues encouraged political leaders to build ad-hoc initiatives and to sideline old norms of policy-making such as communicating through diplomats and relying on bureaucratic expertise. While political leaders more and more relying on non-career diplomats, Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) literature does not tend to focus on the tension between bureaucrats and politicians in policy-making. Although Graham Allison’s works in the 1970s are the early indicators of bureaucratic decision-making in FPA, since then, FPA scholars are more eager to examine the ultimate decision-maker rather than analyzing the bureaucratic stages until the decision is made.

In my paper, I will analyze the changing role of elite-decision makers in foreign policy through the interviews that I conducted with 83 foreign policy-makers in Turkey and Israel. I will also discuss the specific identity of being a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) while examining bureaucratic politics and the role of elites in foreign policy. I argue that the role of elites in foreign policy is in decline because (a) foreign policy is not an issue where technocrats are the sole decision makers anymore; political leaders aim to build ad-hoc initiatives with the help of entrepreneurs, personal ties, and non-career diplomats while sidelining old norms of policy making such as communicating through diplomats, relying on bureaucratic expertise and (b) the rise of populism in world politics as well as accusing the state elites and bureaucrats as weak decision-makers are foreign policy tactics of the populist leaders; in that sense, training of state elites do not help them to cope with the politicization of foreign policy making.

Author

• Berkay Gülen, University of Washington