Understanding Decisionmaking, U.S. Foreign Policy, and The Cuban Missile Crisis

Understanding Barton J.
Bernstein
Decisionmaking, U.S.
Foreign Policy, and the
Cuban Missile Crisis
A Review Essay
Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of

Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2d ed.
New York: Longman, 1999
I
n 1971, Graham Al-
lison published his revised Harvard government department dissertation, Es-
sence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis.1 It was an ambitiously
intelligent and sophisticated book, ranking among the most important studies
in American political science in the 1970s and signiªcantly inºuencing other
ªelds.
Over the years, Allison’s volume helped shape interpretations in disciplines
interested in decisionmaking, and provoked many methodological and con-
ceptual critiques, as well as some on issues of evidence, sources, and missile
crisis history.2 The book made many analysts of policy more self-conscious
about the models of process and of explanation they employed, and Essence
Barton J. Bernstein is Professor of History at Stanford University and Chair of the American Studies
program. He writes on Cold War history, and has been publishing on the Cuban missile crisis since 1963.
The author is indebted to Elizabeth Kopelman Borgwardt, Lynn Eden, Alexander George, Stephen
Krasner, and Scott Sagan for critical comments, to participants in an April 1999 Center for
International Security and Cooperation (Stanford) seminar and a January 2000 international history
seminar (Stanford) for consideration of earlier drafts of this essay, and to Graham Allison and
Philip Zelikow for privately addressing some questions about their research sources. Their gener-
osity has been a model of collegiality in assisting an author who is somewhat critical of their work.
1. Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown,
1971); henceforth: Essence (1971).
2. See, for example, Robert Art, “Bureaucratic Politics and American Foreign Policy: A Critique,”
Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 4 (December 1973), pp. 467–490; Stephen Krasner, “Are Bureaucracies
Important? (Or Allison Wonderland),” Foreign Policy, No. 7 (Summer 1972), pp. 159–179; David
Welch, “The Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics Paradigms: Retrospect and Prospect,”
International Security, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Fall 1992), pp. 112–146; Barton J. Bernstein, “Reconsidering the
Missile Crisis: Dealing with the Problems of the American Jupiters in Turkey,” in James Nathan,
ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), pp. 56–129; Jonathan Bendor
and Thomas Hammond, “Rethinking Allison’s Models,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 86,
No. 2 (June 1992), pp. 301–322; and Len Scott and Steve Smith, “Lessons of October: Historians,
International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 134–164

© 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Understanding Decisionmaking 135
soon became virtually an informal “bible” at various schools and especially at

Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The volume had wide use
in programs that sought to understand and explain the behavior of organiza-
tions, and the tugs and rivalries within bureaucracies, even involving enter-
prises far removed from foreign policy and the U.S. government.
The 1999 publication of a revised edition of Essence,3 as well as the expansion
of available archival, memoir, and interview evidence in the past decade and
a half about the Cuban missile crisis, makes this a propitious time to discuss
critically both editions as ways of understanding U.S. foreign policy in general
and the Cuban missile crisis in particular. In addressing those issues, this essay,
unlike many studies in international security publications, ventures brieºy
beyond discussing the theory and history in Essence to do something more: to
consider the implicit “ideology” of the book, and to show how the 1971 Essence
conceives, often incorrectly, of historical scholarship.
This essay does not hope to be exhaustive in examining and comparing the
two editions’ models of explanation and the interpretations of the missile crisis.
Nor does this review usually seek to justify explicitly its particular focus on
some problems in theory and evidence, and not on others, and why the issues
in the book are usually deemed “major” or typical of certain kinds of problems
that, if taken together cumulatively, seem “major.” Fair-minded critics may
plausibly argue about some of this essay’s choices in examining theory and
evidence, but the expectation is that most readers will ªnd the choices gener-
ally reasonable while tolerantly acknowledging that an author’s taste and
interest sometimes inºuence the choice of problems.
This review essay, beyond this introduction and a later conclusion, is divided
into two major sections. The ªrst provides a comparatively short consideration
of the 1971 Essence. That part brieºy revisits some familiar material in discuss-
ing the weaknesses and strengths in the original edition’s theory and applied
history, and also moves somewhat beyond the published critical scholarship
on the book to treat, among other matters, the intellectual/social history of
Essence. The second section offers a longer consideration of the revised Essence,
with occasional reference to the ªrst edition. That second section does not,
however, discuss other scholarly critiques of the 1999 edition because none of
any depth has yet been published.
Political Scientists, Policy-makers, and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” International Affairs, Vol. 70, No.
4 (October 1994), pp. 659–684.
3. Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2d
ed. (New York: Longman, 1999); henceforth: Essence (1999).

International Security 25:1 136
The Original Essence of Decision (1971)
Essence appeared during the Vietnam War, when scholars and laypeople were
raising disruptive questions about the purposes and ideology of U.S. foreign
policy, including whether it was imperialistic and whether it was democratic.
Allison’s original volume was intentionally conceived not to address such basic
questions of values and of purposes. The book sought to appeal to other
interests and to focus upon very different questions.
situating the book in american scholarship and history

Essence, avoiding much of the sharp-tongued political dialogue of the Vietnam
War years, sought to explain the process of decisionmaking and thus the content
of policy. According to the 1971 volume, the understanding of process became
the way to understand the substance of policy. The book, while seemingly
nonideological, was implicitly quite ideological in result and presumably in
intention. Allison narrowed the deªnition of the important questions in study-
ing foreign policy, and probably wanted to improve the decisionmaking pro-
cesses of the U.S. government.
By avoiding the major questions of U.S. purpose and of ideology, and by
implicitly deciding against value-laden conceptions of American exceptional-
ism, Allison provided frameworks that usually treated the United States as
what might be called an ordinary state, one in which he believed bureaucracies
and organizations substantially deªne policy. The particular inºuence of U.S.
history, of the alleged values of the “Open Door,” and of conceptions of
national mission and of American exceptionalism were implicitly dismissed,
or ignored, in Essence. The proper study was substantially of organizations and
bureaucracy, and their signiªcant interactions.
The book brieºy applied similar frameworks of emphasizing bureaucracy
and organizations in the Soviet Union. By implicitly often minimizing (if not
ignoring) the role of communist ideology and of centralized party control as
authoritarian, Allison also usually treated the Soviet Union as an ordinary
state. The volume generally disregarded the often-ªerce scholarly dialogue, a
quarter-century after World War II, by American historians between “revision-
ists” and “orthodox” interpreters in analyzing Cold War history and the ques-
tions of Soviet versus American blame for that conºict. Essence also ignored
the often-related disputes about the nature of the Soviet system and its effect
on Soviet foreign policy.
Claiming to provide rigor in models and explanations, Essence was soon
used in business schools, in sociology classes on organizational behavior, and

in public administration and public policy classes, among others. The volume
seemed to be a helpful summary of much of the earlier decisionmaking schol-
arship, to reach beyond it at crucial points to present useful modes of analysis,
and to offer a distilled guide even to interpret business decisions or other
organizational matters.
Signiªcantly, Allison’s book brieºy but explicitly challenged foreign policy
realism, with its deªning assumption that states seek to maximize power and
security, and with modern realism’s frequently added but not essential as-
sumption that divisions over policy within the government are not analytically
interesting or signiªcant in explaining state behavior. Essence offered a mark-
edly different way of studying U.S. foreign policy. Building on earlier more
impressionistic and sometimes more subtle work in political science notably
by Richard Neustadt, and by Roger Hilsman and Warner Schilling, among
others, and emerging from a Harvard study group on bureaucratic politics
(termed the “May group” after its chair, the well-known diplomatic historian
Ernest May), Essence stressed the domestic making of foreign policy and
seemed to reject the realist conception of a neo-Hobbesian world in which
states operated. Thus, in challenging realism, which was already the dominant
analytical trend in American political science studies of foreign policy—a form
of realism more constricted than the theories of George Kennan or Walter
Lippmann—the book emphasized the need to look within the state, and in
particular ways and places inside the state, to understand American foreign
policy and its making.
Surprisingly, the 1971 Essence often narrowed, disregarded, or distorted
historians’ work in the process of implying considerable “newness” for the
book’s general analysis of the importance of bureaucratic politics. Allison
seemed not to know, or was unwilling to acknowledge, that historians for some
time had been using a form of bureaucratic politics to structure parts of their
studies in both domestic and foreign policy. Published histories, for example,
dealing with the Herbert Hoover–Henry Stimson division on dealing with
early 1930s’ Japanese aggression, the internationalist versus nationalist dispute
within the Roosevelt administration over responses to the Great Depression,
the differences within that administration over pre–Pearl Harbor policy toward
Japan, the Treasury versus War Department wartime battle over policy for
postwar Germany, and the early Truman administration’s foreign policy divi-
sions on Soviet policy frequently focused on the conºict within the American
state—often within the executive branch between competing advisers. Thus,
Allison basically ignored much of the then-signiªcant historical writing about
modern American foreign policy (including the well-known books by recent

Harvard-afªliated luminaries Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Herbert Feis, and William

Langer), or simpliªed the historical literature, or chose quite selectively in
order to ªnd the conceptual narrowness that he claimed dominated historical
scholarship interpreting U.S. foreign policy.4
In large measure, Allison probably was not really interested in what histo-
rians had been writing, and he was primarily addressing a social science
audience. But had he chosen to be systematically attentive to relevant historical
scholarship, he might well have said something that would have been more
accurate about Essence’s relationship to history writing: that he was often
making explicit what close-grained historical studies handled in ad hoc, rather
eclectic, and nontheoretical ways. Undoubtedly, the historians’ “ad hocism,”
interest in details, and frequent emphases on personality and on core values
seemed to lack scientiªc precision and could seem intellectually sloppy to
someone who wanted “models” or “paradigms.” Allison would have been
correct to contend that those many historical works lacked explicit models.
They did not seek to offer a general theory (like bureaucratic interest) to
explain behavior within the government, and many historical works empha-
sized differences in values and personality among competing government
members. Also, historians seldom, if ever, delved into organizational culture
or ways of processing information, and thus often did not appreciate how
organizations could inºuence policy by narrowing options, privileging particu-
lar responses, providing limited information, and selectively implementing
orders or wishes from higher-ups.
Viewed from the critical perspective of what American historians had actu-
ally been writing about foreign policy and recent American history, and their
frequent emphasis on bureaucratic differences in explaining policy, Allison’s
work was less new than he contended. But the 1971 Essence’s promise of rigor,
explicit models, thoughtful laying out of assumptions, and attention to con-
ceptualization and the role of “lenses” in interpreting evidence made the
volume potentially very valuable to social scientists and very unlike history
books. Essence’s formal division between a theory chapter for each of the three
models (that theory chapter usually also included many 1940s’ and 1950s’
historical illustrations) and then an applied-missile-crisis-history chapter for
each model also made the book very different from historical writing. Essence
4. See, for example, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton
Mifºin, 1959), pp. 179–260; Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor: The Coming of the War between
the United States and Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950); and William Langer
and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Harper, 1953).

even had numbered propositions, and often many segments under each propo-
sition, thus betokening systematic analysis, near-science, and rigor.
Undoubtedly, the book’s emphases and its neglect of recent published his-
tory were an indication of the sharp divide in post–World War II scholarship
in the United States, and especially by the late 1960s and early 1970s, between
political science and history. Political science had moved more toward models
and discussions of methodology and efforts to generate theory reaching be-
yond particular events, while history seemed more substantially empirical and
also wanted sometimes to discuss the nature of the United States, or its core
values and purposes. Inside the political science profession, concerns about the
nature of the United States or its core values were reserved most often for older
practitioners, who frequently were treated as dated scholars. These concerns
were relegated also to those political scientists, whether young or old, who did
political philosophy, not foreign policy analysis or international relations. In
the late 1960s and well into the 1970s, political philosophy, with its self-
conscious interest often in advancing particular values, generally seemed mar-
ginal to the American political science profession, with its heavy continuing
emphasis in many areas on behaviorist approaches, and its admiration for
what was considered intellectual tough-mindedness.
allison’s three models and explanations

Allison’s 1971 Essence explicitly offered three models or conceptual approaches
that have become widely familiar: Model I (the rational actor, or unitary
rational actor); Model II (the organizational process); and Model III (govern-
mental politics, usually called bureaucratic politics). These three models, or
lenses, or paradigms—and Allison often shifted terms and also employed
others—were conceived, in part, as alternative ways of analyzing events and
of seeing and emphasizing different facts because different assumptions were
operating.
Unlike epistemological relativists in history, Allison did not challenge schol-
arly “objectivity” as either a goal or a result. Yet his conception of “lenses,”
unless there were explicit rules and standards for putting together the varying
perceptions of events, had a peculiar quality of fragmenting reality and making
observation, and knowledge, dependent upon the chosen theory. He designed
his explicit models to make analysts very aware of their assumptions, and to
allow them to conduct rigorous inquiry. But how to put together the varied
ªndings of different theory-driven models could be, and was, unclear in
Essence.

Generally, the 1971 Essence contended, by explicit argument and by illustra-

tion, that Model I was simplistic and greatly inadequate. As a result, important
portions of its conclusions would have to be supplanted, and not simply
supplemented, by the ªndings from Models II and III, which Allison believed
were usually superior. Allison treated Models II and III in explicit theory and
in his application in his history chapters as competitive and sometimes as
complementary. In the book’s tone and organization, there was some implica-
tion that Model III was superior, but there was no sustained argument to that
effect. Thus, Essence, if read closely, seemed to avoid judging the comparative
value of Models II and III. Adding to difªculties, Essence was sometimes
unclear on why a part of the book’s narrative on the missile crisis or its ªndings
on certain events fell into Model II and not III, or vice versa.
Even more serious, Model III as a concept, and in its application in examin-
ing the Cuban missile crisis, had a suppleness that approached dangerous
promiscuity. In much of Allison’s explicit formulation, his discussion of
Model III stressed that policy resulted from “pulling and hauling,” from nego-
tiating and sparring, among the main actors. In explaining the purposes of
actors, the model also emphasized the bureaucratic interests that the main
actors embodied: They stood where they sat. But at points, Model III’s theory
also tossed into the mix for the governmental “players” a medley of other
causal factors, reaching well beyond the standing/sitting connection, to ex-
plain their behavior: their personalities, backgrounds, personal loyalties, and
other matters. Thus, the seeming near-parsimony of an actor’s “stand[ing]
depends on where you sit,” or even more tempered formulations in Essence,
dissolved in both the book’s “theory” chapter and the book’s application
(“history”) chapter into a grab bag of inºuences, with inadequate guidance to
the reader for sorting them out or weighing the major factors.5
If an individual’s representing a particular bureaucracy (standing/sitting)
was not key, what inºuence was crucial in explaining an actor’s initial position,
beliefs, proclivities, and perceptions, and the actor’s willingness to compro-
mise in particular ways but not others, and to create certain alliances but not
others in the pulling and hauling? And, contrary to Allison, might some
individuals’ important value commitments and policy preferences be sig-
niªcantly autonomous, and rooted in causes difªcult for Allison (or maybe
others) to determine short of preparing substantially researched biographies?
Did the particular salient causal inºuence—whether personality, or back-
ground, or bureaucratic membership—on an individual vary from person
5. Essence (1971), pp. 162–178, at p. 176; see also pp. 179–210.

to person? And also at different junctures in the process for the same actor,
might different causes come into play as most signiªcant? In practice, in
Essence, the result often was a set of descriptions and even some “theory” that
seemed to indicate a kind of eclectic palace politics or cabinet politics ap-
proach—long familiar to historians and often employed by them—but Essence
did this despite its lexicon of near-science and alleged precision. The lexicon
might brieºy conceal the mushiness of the model and thus also perhaps of the
historical interpretation that the model’s application offered for the missile
crisis.
Essence discussed, in a substantial endnote, philosopher of science Carl
Hempel’s “covering law” model of historical explanation, and approvingly
but brieºy Hempel’s conception (and that of some other philosophers of
science) that explanation was logically the converse of prediction. Essence’s
text also cited Wittgenstein6 to explain or justify the use of the term “games,”
to describe intragovernment policy formulations. Nevertheless, after mention-
ing Hempel, Ernest Nagel, and Wittgenstein, the book provided models, or
lenses, or paradigms with substantial mushiness. Allison’s citations to analyti-
cal philosophy helped promise rigor, but the book did not deliver on that
promise.
Essence encountered troubling difªculties with some other basic problems:
What role, if any, for example, did Congress and public opinion play in Model
III? The book also seemed not to value the likely beneªts in the formulation
of policy of “multiple advocacy,” to use Alexander George’s phrase.
In addition, Allison’s conceptualization and presentation of Model III were
sometimes uncertain about how to treat the hierarchy among the pullers and
haulers. The book ignored or minimized the importance of who initially stipu-
lated the agenda for pulling and hauling, and who chose the “players” in the
“game.” These central matters—of power—merited the closer attention of
theory, of considerable emphasis on analytical distinctions, and of careful
historical explanation in studying particular cases.7
6. Ibid., pp. 278–279, n. 5, and pp. 162–163.

7. Ibid., pp. 164–173, 185–210. The 1971 Essence might be contrasted with Allison and Morton
Halperin, “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,” World Politics, Vol.
24, Special Supplement (1972); and in Raymond Tanter and Richard Ullman, eds., Theory and Policy
in International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 40–79, for elabora-
tions and modiªcations of the conception of bureaucratic politics. See especially pp. 44 (on hier-
archy); 44, 48–49, and 58 (distinguishing internal bureaucratic differences from bureaucratic
politics); 48 (on multiple “interests” in bureaucratic politics); 47–48 and 58 (on Congress and
domestic politics); and 54 (virtually folding organizational matters into the conception of bureau-
cratic politics). This 1972 essay was not explicitly presented as sometimes modifying Essence (1971),
but that essay can be interpreted that way.

Perhaps most important, the book seemed unsure about how the president’s
role should be conceived in Model III. Usually he was treated as just another
puller and hauler. But occasionally, the book suggested, more often in its
applied-history segments, that he was above the “game,” and at another level.8
Essence provided no conceptual guidelines, or even implicit rules, however, for
combining these presidential roles and determining when one role or the other
was crucial in explaining policy.
The volume could be read in various ways on these matters. If the answer
was a combination, was it the president who determined his role, and was he
usually doing so self-consciously? Or was his role only to be understood by
the later-day analyst? How did other pullers and haulers operate in the presi-
dent’s presence, and in his absence? What if the president speciªcally sought
to guide them, and even direct them?
A basic problem with Essence was whether the Cuban missile crisis was a
good subject for a test case-study. That crisis was probably the most dangerous
two weeks in modern history, and it was unusual among foreign policy events
in that the president and many of his advisers focused sharply and often
exclusively on missile crisis issues. Thus, despite Allison’s defense of his
choosing the missile crisis because it was a tough case study,9 there is serious
reason to doubt whether generalizations from that crisis period would ªt more
normal times and situations in the scholars’ efforts to construct conceptual
frameworks to understand decisionmaking. The missile crisis embodied an
important uniqueness: the concentrated period, and the sense of peril and
possible disaster.
defining and using evidence

Essence’s conceptual problems sometimes trickled into problems involving the
privileging and use of evidence. It was not inherent in the three models but
an independent intellectual decision, probably rooted in the work of Richard
Neustadt and other political scientists of the time, and approvingly endorsed
by Allison, that archival documents would be virtually ignored and that inter-
views and memoirs involving former U.S. participants privileged. Some of this
privileging resulted necessarily from the problem of dealing with then-recent
events, when the available archives were skimpy at best, but a practice rooted
in temporary necessity took on the form of virtually an operating principle
about deªning what constituted valuable evidence in Essence.
8. Essence (1971), pp. 149, 158–160, 194, 210–215.

9. Ibid., pp. 8–9.

Essence approvingly quoted Neustadt: “If I were forced to choose between

the documents on the one hand, and late, limited, partial interviews with some
of the principal participants on the other, I would be forced to discard the
documents.” The book’s afªrmed belief, and the operating practice in the book,
was that skillful interviews would reveal the subtleties of bargaining and the
differences in individuals’ priorities and perceptions, while documents were
judged unlikely to yield such understanding. Implicitly, but not explicitly, it
was an oblique assault upon historians’ practices with their emphasis on
archives and their faith in their capacity to wring evidence and interpretation
from dusty papers. The faith in interviews could carry over, as it often did in
Essence, to a heavy but sometimes uncritical reliance on memoirs and on the
books by others who had conducted interviews.10
Perhaps in ways not intended, the 1971 Essence allowed later analysts to test,
at least in part, the book’s guiding principles on the use of evidence. In a
number of notable cases, the book explained events that turned out not to have
occurred or to have happened very differently from the book’s claim: for
example, on the matter of which administration (Dwight D. Eisenhower’s or
John F. Kennedy’s) had deployed the ªfteen Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic
missiles (IRBMs) in Turkey; on whether JFK had given orders in 1961 and early
1962 to remove those missiles, and thus on whether his orders had been
thwarted; on whether the U.S. Navy had violated presidential orders and failed
to move the quarantine (blockade) line closer to Cuba; and also on whether an
effective U.S. “surgical” air strike against the Soviet missiles in Cuba was
possible and on whether the air force failed to explain why it was recommend-
ing about 500 sorties. Apparently Allison’s trusting faith in interview and
memoir evidence helped him, unintentionally, to misunderstand these and
other matters.11
Allison’s uncritical acceptance of the wrong “history” may have occurred in
part because his “theory” told him that events like this (especially organiza-
tions thwarting higher-level orders) happened, and then he implicitly relaxed
10. Ibid., at p. 181; see also pp. 186 and viii–ix (on documenting entirely from the public record).
Obviously the interviews often determined what was chosen from the public record, and how it
was interpreted.
11. Ibid., pp. 141–143 and 225–226 (Jupiters), 128–130 (navy), and 124–126 (air strike). On unrav-
eling the story of the Jupiters, see Bernstein, “Reconsidering the Missile Crisis,” pp. 56–128; and
Philip Nash, The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). On the navy, see Joseph F. Bouchard, Command in
Crisis: Four Case Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 110–114; and Ambassa-
dor David Ormsby-Gore to Foreign Ofªce, October 24, 1962, PREM 11/3690, Public Record Ofªce,
Kew, Great Britain. On the air force, see Merritt Olsen to Allison, January 11, 1978, courtesy of
Zelikow, Allison, and Olsen. For later revisions, see Essence (1999), pp. 224–235, 252–253, n. 116.

the evidential standards when he seemed to ªnd such an example as reported

in interviews and memoirs.
Surprisingly, even during the Vietnam War, when many academics ques-
tioned the candor of Kennedy and Johnson administration foreign policy
experts, Allison seemed not to doubt the probity of former Kennedy adminis-
tration stalwarts, or to wonder whether their desire for prominence in future
administrations might lead them to selective memory and self-serving recol-
lections about missile crisis events. Because Allison often used conªdential
sources, and his footnotes are thus more than occasionally inadequate, inde-
pendent checking by other scholars was sometimes difªcult in assessing his
evidence.
Presumably, Allison’s American interview sources never mentioned “Mon-
goose,” or suggested that there had been such Kennedy administration efforts
after the Bay of Pigs to eliminate Fidel Castro and topple his regime. Despite
Allison’s discussion of models and lenses of viewing, his book did not reºect
caution, or critical self-awareness, in the determination of the reliability of
some key evidence. Essence was often remarkably trusting of former U.S.
ofªcials.
evidence and theory: some issues involving model ii

The application of Essence’s models in the applied-history chapters raised
problems about the book’s understanding of missile crisis history, and some-
times about the models themselves. For example, if State Department ofªcials
like Secretary Dean Rusk and Undersecretary George Ball had thwarted ex-
plicit presidential orders in late 1961 or early 1962 to remove the Jupiters from
Turkey, as Allison had contended, why would that have been Model II (the
organizational process) behavior, and not a form of Model III (governmental
politics) behavior? Were Rusk and Ball just part of the organization, or should
not they be conceived of differently?
There was also a larger set of problems in using Model II. As presented in
the 1971 Essence, Model II’s emphasis on organizational culture, and on the
way it can ill-serve ofªcials at higher levels like the Executive Committee of
the National Security Council (Ex Comm), may actually impair the analyst’s
understanding of organizations, their culture, and their behavior in some parts
of the missile crisis. Problems with organizations ill-serving superiors on major
issues do not occur all the time, and perhaps not very frequently. The difªcult
task for Allison, or any analyst using such a theory about organizations, was
to retain the theory as a guide, but to be critical of evidence and not to allow
the theory to serve to validate soft, or dubious, evidence. Otherwise, the theory

about organizational culture became the shaping lens, and encouraged the
misuse of evidence. In a circular process, the theory or lens validated that soft
evidence, thereby also helping to establish the value of the theory or lens.
Despite such criticism of Essence’s use of Model II, the model could still have
considerable analytic value. It reminded scholars, in looking at particular
policies (“output”), that they might not be actually looking at high-level deci-
sionmaker’s purposes, but rather at an organization’s mode of operation. Such
understanding could push a scholar to look for evidence that the policy was
formed by an organization, not by a top decisionmaker.
Essence of Decision (1999)
The published criticism of the 1971 Essence, the availability of a large and
growing secondary literature on the Cuban missile crisis, the declassiªcation
of many U.S. documents, the use by some scholars of Soviet documents, the
recent recollections and explanations by missile crisis participants, and the
declassiªcation of the tape recordings of the Ex Comm meetings, and then the
transcription (under Ernest May and Philip Zelikow) of these tapes all helped
to make a substantial revision of Essence possible, and presumably desirable.12
By the 1990s, the 1971 book, though long a best-seller in political science and
probably in some other ªelds, seemed badly dated.
the challenges of revising ESSENCE

In a revision, the test for most scholars would be whether, and if so, how, the
new book’s theory sections could deal with the accumulating criticisms from
a quarter-century of published scholarship. Would those sections have to be
greatly reshaped because of new evidential ªndings about the missile crisis,
and would much of Models II and III have to be jettisoned? Would a new
model be introduced for the president? How would the new evidence on the
crisis be handled in the applied-history chapters? Could principles be formu-
lated and applied to integrate the ªndings of the models into one interpretation
of the missile crisis? Adding to problems facing a revision of the book, organ-
izational theory had become more complicated and nuanced. In turn, in deal-
ing with Model III, scholars had usually found it difªcult to operationalize, in
12. See, in particular, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy J. Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrush-
chev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997); and Ernest R. May and Philip
D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). For a warning about errors in these transcribed
tapes, see Sheldon M. Stern, “What JFK Really Said,” Atlantic Monthly, May 2000, pp. 122–128.

rigorous form, the theory of bureaucratic politics, so presumably the reformu-

lated theory would have to be subject to operationalization.
The division of labor among the two co-authors is undiscussed in the new
Essence, aside from the statement that Graham Allison is a political scientist
and Philip Zelikow a historian. Each has been in the U.S. government. Allison
served brieºy as an assistant secretary of defense in the early Clinton admin-
istration, and Zelikow was on George Bush’s National Security Council.
Compared to the 1971 book, the new edition is about one-quarter longer and
considerably richer in evidence and in interpretation of the missile crisis,
though the book also contains many seemingly unnecessary additions on the
Bush administration’s policies, which are mostly treated in the three “theory”
chapters. Only three explicit models appear in the book, though Models II and
III are somewhat reformulated. Model II is renamed as “organizational behav-
ior,” and the theory chapters for all three models are expanded. Model I’s
theory chapter now includes a brief discussion of rational choice theory, psy-
chology, and game theory. Model II’s theory chapter is supple and richer than
in the 1971 volume, reºecting the quarter-century’s work on organization
theory. Model III, in a partial revision, is even more of a grab bag of various
explanations than it was in the 1971 edition.
Organized essentially like the ªrst edition, the 1999 book still has three sets
of two chapters (a theory chapter followed by an applied-history chapter on
the missile crisis for each model), plus a preface, introduction, and conclusion.
The book, by retaining its earlier quotation from Neustadt but then adding
many qualiªers, leaves unclear whether the authors in principle prefer inter-
view sources to archival-type materials. But in practice the revised study
actually depends heavily on archival materials, and especially on the Ex Comm
and other missile crisis verbatim minutes. One wonders whether Allison and
Zelikow agree on the Neustadt dictum and why it is still in the book.13 The
new Essence, reºecting emerging trends in recent years among security studies
scholars, adheres to some of the research tactics of historians in doing substan-
tial archival work.
The revised book almost never states what major interpretations have been
changed, or why. The new edition usually avoids an explicit dialogue with the
earlier edition, or its critics, and an explicit acknowledgment of mistakes in the
1971 edition. Unlike the ªrst edition, the new one makes a somewhat ex-
panded, but still-incomplete, effort to present an integrated interpretation at
the end. In the revised Essence, Model I is regarded with more respect than in
13. Essence (1999), pp. 312–313.

the 1971 book, but Models II and III are still usually treated as more important.
The revised volume seems hasty and less like a thorough revision and more
like a patchwork operation: inserting new material, adding qualiªers, acknowl-
edging much of the new history, but not dealing thoroughly, and often not
adequately, with the many criticisms published since the 1971 edition.
the treatment of historical scholarship, epistemology, and

explanation
The 1999 volume, unlike the 1971 edition, generally avoids—with the excep-
tion of treating George Kennan—discussing the actual practices by historians
in writing diplomatic history, and thereby neither places them in the rational
actor framework nor acknowledges that many had often used what scholars
sometimes called a cabinet-politics approach. But in newly added paragraphs,
the 1999 book also seems unduly to narrow, and partly to misunderstand,
Kennan’s thought and thus why he really does not properly ªt into the rational
actor framework.14 Contrary to the implications in Essence, Kennan, in his
famous American Diplomacy (1951), as well as in his two volumes of later
memoirs, which are full of the stuff of internecine bureaucratic/personal rival-
ries, did not claim that U.S. policy had conformed, historically, to rational actor
behavior. Indeed, Kennan described and lamented virtually the opposite: that,
in his judgment, the inºuences of popular passions and of legalisms and
moralisms, and of bureaucratic or personal disputes, had frequently blocked
the proper formation of U.S. foreign policy dedicated to the national interest,
which he wanted policymakers to pursue.
It may be testimony to the inºuence of the 1971 Essence, and to the somewhat
related changes in the international relations and U.S. foreign policy ªelds
among political scientists and other social scientists, that there has been greater
effort in the past quarter-century to operationalize, and test, theory. Thus, the
1999 edition deletes the indictment that appeared in the 1971 version: “The
disgrace of foreign policy studies is the infrequency with which propositions
of any generality are formulated and tested.”15 By implication, the 1999 edition,
even more than the often faulted 1971 book, has to rise to this challenge of
formulating and adequately testing, with clear evidence, the theory in the
single case of the missile crisis.
The new Essence, unlike the 1971 edition, approvingly cites philosopher R.G.
Collingwood and, in line with his 1933 urgings, calls for “empathetic recon-
14. Ibid., pp. 26–29; cf. Essence. (1971), pp. 37–38.

15. Essence (1971), pp. 33–34; cf. Essence (1999), p. 25.

struction of the circumstances of choice as actually perceived by the decision

maker.”16 That call, though undoubtedly agreeable to many historians, would
seem to raise serious problems for political scientists who seek to be scientiªc
and who rely upon theories that can be tested and operationalized in agreed-
upon ways. Essence never discusses how such “empathetic reconstruction”
could be rigorously operationalized for agreed-upon testing.
The 1999 Essence is concerned, brieºy, with the logic and nature of explana-
tion. The book revises, with an important addition, its earlier substantial
endnote on Hempel and the “covering law” conception of historical explana-
tion. The expanded note informs readers that Zelikow, unlike Allison, rejects
Hempel’s conception that the model of the “covering law” carries over from
science into history. That expanded endnote also has references to William
James and John Dewey, and to Hilary Putnam’s recent defense of James, with
Putnam emphasizing that James rejected the dualism of fact and interpretation,
and of fact and value.17 But Allison and Zelikow never explicitly acknowledge
that their substantial difference on the nature of historical explanation, and
thus apparently on the nature of “covering laws” and presumably on the
fact/interpretation and fact/value dualisms, has no apparent implication, or
effect, on the actual content of their collaborative book. If it did, the revised
Essence would reveal, explicitly or implicitly, such differences elsewhere. It does
not.
problems of theory and evidence in explaining the soviet deployment

of missiles to cuba—models i and iii
The revised Essence, like the 1971 edition, addresses three sets of issues and
generally seeks to use its models in understanding the missile crisis events: (1)
the Soviet placement of missiles in Cuba: (2) the U.S. quarantine (a modiªed
blockade) of Cuba; and (3) the Soviet withdrawal of the missiles.
In 1971, in addressing these three issues, Essence systematically applied each
of its three models to each issue, thus producing nine sets of explanations. Yet,
without discussing the departure from that strategy, the 1999 book does not
apply Model III to the question of why the Soviets put the missiles in Cuba.
Thus, the new book seems to give great weight to a Model I explanation of the
16. Essence (1999), p. 57, n. 19, on Collingwood’s 1933 comments. Cf. Essence (1971), p. 288, n. 95,
for a reference to Collingwood but without any endorsement of his thought. For a philosophical
dispute about Collingwood, see Leon Goldstein, “Dray on Re-Enactment and Constructionism,”
History and Theory, Vol. 37, No. 3 (October 1998), pp. 409–421.
17. On the covering law and explanation, see Essence (1999), pp. 11–12, n. 1; and cf. ibid., pp. 278–
279, n. 5. On James, see Hilary Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question (Cambridge, Mass.: Black-
well, 1995), pp. 8–21.

Soviet deployment, and in doing so implicitly also values Model I more than
did the 1971 book.
In 1971, Allison’s Model I single answer to the ªrst question, of Soviet
purpose, was that the Soviets had sought signiªcantly to supplement their
missile power by placing missiles in Cuba. The 1971 Essence had dismissed
other possible Soviet motives, including the Soviet effort to buttress Cuban
defense from possible U.S. aggression. Part of Allison’s 1971 technique, and it
was highly questionable, was to seem to decide, a priori, that there could be
only one Soviet motive, and not some combination of motives such as enhanced
missile power and, say, also Cuban defense. Yet, there was nothing inherent in
Model I, or in the logic and normal form of historical explanation, that limited
a nation-state to just one motive, or that should have restricted an analyst to
only one cause in explaining an event.18
By the late 1980s, on the basis partly of claims by retired Soviet ofªcials, a
loose consensus emerged among missile crisis scholars and some former Ex
Comm members that the answer about Soviet purpose for the deployment
involved a combination of two Soviet motives: the quest for enhanced missile
power and the desire for Cuban defense against the United States. In Nikita
Khrushchev’s 1970s’ memoirs, the Soviet premier had emphasized Cuban
defense as his primary motive, and he brieºy suggested the desire for en-
hanced Soviet missile power as an additional purpose. In the 1980s and early
1990s, different Soviet representatives usually accepted both motives, but
sometimes split on which of the two was more important. Accepting the
two-motive answer, a few former Ex Comm members—McGeorge Bundy,
Robert McNamara, and George Ball—also seemed to split on whether missile
power was preeminent and “defense of Cuba” secondary, or vice versa.19
In using Model I, Allison (with Zelikow) changed the implicit rules for the
answer in Essence on the number of Soviet motives for the deployment. Thus,
18. Essence (1971), pp. 49–50. See also the last sentence on this issue of Cuban defense on p. 50,
which discussed it as a possible “subsidiary effect” and rejected it as an “overriding objective.”
That ambiguous phrasing might leave wiggle room for Cuban defense as an additional motive in
the book’s analysis, but Essence on earlier pages seemed to reject “Cuban defense” as even one of
the Soviet motives.
19. James Blight and David Welch, On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile
Crisis (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), pp. 29, 226–296; Andrei Gromyko, Memoirs, trans. Harold
Shukman (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 173; Anatoli Gribkov, in Gribkov and William Smith,
Operation Anadyr: U.S. and Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chicago: Edition Q,
1994), pp. 11–14; interviews and discussions with Ball, 1989; Bundy, 1989–93; and McNamara, 1993
and 1999; and McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years
(New York: Random House, 1988), pp. 415–419. Obviously, the acceptance by Ex Comm members
of such views in later years does not establish the accuracy of those views, but because the
endorsement of those views did constitute a critique—variously implicit or explicit—of these men’s

the revised book offers a combination of motives, rather than a single motive,
for the Soviet missile emplacement in Cuba. The reason for revising the “rule”
on the number of motives is unstated. But in the new Essence’s interpretation,
the two authors link increased Soviet “missile power” with another Soviet
motive: “Berlin—Win, Trade, or Trap.”20
The revised Essence dismisses the “Cuban defense” motive on various un-
convincing grounds. The book argues, in part, that the deployment’s size (so
many missiles) and its components (MRBMs and IRBMs, rather than short-
range nuclear weapons) were not essential to defending Cuba.21 A more rea-
sonable and appropriately supple explanation would have acknowledged that
these weapons were viewed generally, in a rational actor framework by Soviet
ofªcials, as desirable because they would both defend Cuba and enhance the
Soviet missile arsenal.
Essence’s 1999 general dismissal of the Cuban defense motive is especially
surprising given that (1) Khrushchev repeatedly claimed Cuban defense pri-
vately and publicly; (2) many of Khrushchev’s associates believed him in 1962
and also later; and (3) a major book, “One Hell of a Gamble” (by Aleksandr
Fursenko and Timothy Naftali) that exploits Soviet archives, and is usually
uncritically trusted by Allison and Zelikow, emphasizes Cuban defense as a
signiªcant Khrushchev motive and generally rejects a “Berlin” motive. The
revised Essence does not systematically argue with interpreters who maintain
the importance of Cuban defense,22 though, in a strange twist at the end of the
book’s section on Model I and Soviet motives for the deployment, Essence in
own thinking during the missile crisis, that later endorsement of a critique seems very often
contrary to their interest and should be taken seriously as an important indication of how
(admittedly soft) evidence has changed views. There may well be still-unexamined Soviet archives
on Khrushchev’s 1962 thinking that may help resolve this factual/interpretive dispute.
20. Essence (1999), pp. 99–109.
21. Ibid., pp. 82–88; see also pp. 88–109.
22. Fursenko and Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble,” pp. 167–182. Despite the general argument of
their “Nuclear Decision” chapter, see also pp. 170–171, for possibly skimpy support for the “Berlin”
argument, which is virtually dismissed elsewhere in their book and fully in 1999–2000 discussions
by Naftali and in 2000 discussions by Fursenko. Fursenko has recently been in the Soviet archives
on the Berlin crisis, 1958–63, and reports that he found no evidence connecting it to the deployment
of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Essence (1999) intermittently uses “One Hell of a Gamble,” pp. 82–109,
but does not seek to rebut it point by point on Soviet motives. Fedor Burlatsky, Khrushchev and the
First Russian Spring: The Era of Khrushchev through the Eyes of His Adviser, trans. Daphne Skillen
(New York: Scribner’s, 1988), pp. 173–174, thought that Khrushchev wanted the missile deploy-
ment to defend Cuba and to affect the strategic balance, with the second purpose opening
possibilities on Berlin. Anatoly Dobrynin, In Conªdence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold
War Presidents (New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 73, offers a similar interpretation, and so does
Gribkov in Gribkov and Smith, Operation Anadyr, pp. 12–14.

a single sentence states that “Cuban defense” was “a constant consideration in

the background.” That arresting sentence seems hasty and lame.23
Interestingly, in a set of events unmentioned in the revised Essence but
discussed in “One Hell of a Gamble,” Khrushchev’s desire to place missiles in
Cuba ran into some early opposition among his advisers. At ªrst, at a mid-May
1962 meeting of the Soviet Defense Council, Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan
objected to placing Soviet missiles and troops in Cuba, but a majority endorsed
the proposal. Three days later, the Presidium, presumably including Mikoyan,
approved Khrushchev’s venture.24 There are puzzling questions why the re-
vised Essence did not try explicitly to place these events, even brieºy, within
its unused Model III framework on the issue of the Soviet deployment.
Allison and Zelikow’s argument that Berlin was one of two important Soviet
motives for the deployment is clever but not compelling. It is, in fact, highly
speculative. The two authors took some skimpy evidence, and ignore the fact
that Khrushchev neither expressed this “purpose” to his 1962 associates, nor
claimed it later in his memoirs and other post-1962 forums. In contrast to the
1999 Essence’s argument of “missile power” and “Berlin,” the interpretation of
increased “missile power” and “Cuban defense” motives, when these two
motives are taken together, seems best to explain Khrushchev’s basic decision
to place missiles in Cuba.
the application of models i and iii in u.s. missile crisis history

In analyzing the U.S. choice of a quarantine (a modiªed blockade), and in
applying Models I and III in that explanation, the 1999 Essence runs into
problems about the meaning and the use of Model I and also slights some
questions about why the Kennedy administration chose the quarantine with-
out ªrst seeking private negotiations with the Soviets.
For Kennedy in October 1962, the fear of Soviet counteraction in Berlin, as
Essence argues, in using Model I, does help explain the choice of a quarantine.
Kennedy opted for a quarantine, and not a more bellicose response, Allison
and Zelikow stress, because JFK was afraid of a Soviet military backlash
against Berlin in retaliation for U.S. action against Cuba. That is probably a
large part of the explanation, mixed with JFK’s fear of Soviet nuclear retaliation
from Cuba against the United States if the United States selected a stronger
response than a quarantine.
23. Essence (1999), p. 108; cf. Essence (1971), p. 50.

24. Fursenko and Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble,” pp. 179–182.

The revised Essence quickly—too quickly—brushes aside the possibility of

private U.S. negotiations with the Soviets, rather than a public confrontation.25
Like most interpretations, the book also stresses JFK’s worries about keeping
the alliance system together. But unlike some interpreters, Allison and Zelikow
acknowledge an important theme: that U.S. “domestic politics were certainly
a factor for Kennedy” in choosing his response. According to the revised
Essence’s application of Model I, President Kennedy could not tolerate Soviet
missiles, and he had to act to get them out or face political reprisals at home.
As Robert F. Kennedy soon privately told his brother, the president, “there isn’t
any choice . . . you would have been [otherwise] impeached.”26
As in the 1971 book, which permitted multiple motives for Kennedy’s choice
of the quarantine and his rejection of other options, the 1999 edition is very
generous, conceptually, and allows Kennedy multiple motives under Model I.
Though other analysts might slightly quarrel with the mix, and many may
desire a clear statement of priorities in the mix, this 1999 Model I history, as
history, seems useful and eminently reasonable—as far as it goes.27
In applying Model III to the quarantine, the 1999 Essence runs into some
peculiar problems. Most of the lengthy segment of the chapter on the quaran-
tine is not about the choice of the quarantine, but about other matters, includ-
ing the U.S. discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba. The nine-page segment on
selecting the quarantine mostly describes various advisers’ thinking, and could
mostly have been written by someone who rejected Model III as a useful
lens. But that nine-page segment does include a thoughtful, one-and-a-half-
page analysis of Kennedy’s concerns about domestic politics and international
affairs.28 That domestic-politics analysis is not dissimilar in its central argu-
ments from the much briefer material in the book’s Model I, applied-history
chapter.
Why JFK’s domestic political fears and concerns ªrst ªt Model I and then
Model III is not explained. If his fears and concerns are part of Model I, do
they constitute a part of the framework for the rational actor? Not according
to the book’s discussion of the theory of Model I. It is as if the co-authors are
unsure about what Model I includes in practice, and how to apply their theory,
part of the time, when doing applied history involving that model.
25. Essence (1999), pp. 114–115.

26. Ibid., pp. 113–114.
27. Ibid., pp. 110–120.
28. Ibid., pp. 325–347 (on the quarantine), 338–347 (on politics of choice), and 339–340 (on JFK);
for almost identical phrasing of pp. 339–340, see Essence (1971), p. 194.

ESSENCE’s use of model ii to reexamine two puzzles in soviet behavior

The use of historical evidence and of theory intersects in the 1999 Essence’s
efforts, employing Model II, to provide what the two authors too brieºy
acknowledge are suggestive explanations to two troubling puzzles about Soviet
behavior: First, why were the Soviet missiles in Cuba not camouºaged before
October 14 (the date of the key U-2 overºight that photographed them) to
prevent their discovery by U.S. surveillance ºights? Second, why were the
Soviet SAMs (surface-to-air missiles), which were operational well before the
MRBMs and IRBMs, not used to shoot down that U-2 surveillance ºight over
Cuba?29
The 1971 Essence argued, in a speculative use of Model II, that the Soviet
forces installing the missiles in Cuba were simply following their organiza-
tion’s standard operating procedure (SOP), and therefore did not camouºage
the missiles.30 To some critics in the 1970s, that contention, absent any proof,
seemed counterintuitive. After all, could an organization’s SOP be so powerful
that the dramatic new facts—the Soviet forces were thousands of miles outside
the Soviet Union, and in Cuba, deploying Soviet missiles in a strange land—
did not compel explicit reconsideration of standard procedures? To such critics,
the SOP answer seemed unconvincing.
The 1999 book’s analysis, while similar to the 1971 version, is broader and
also somewhat different. It constitutes both an enrichment and a slight retreat
by no longer relying exclusively upon the 1971 version’s analysis of standard
operating procedure. Part of the new answer to what might be called the “no
camouºage” puzzle, the 1999 Essence contends, is that the Soviet team that
persuaded Castro to accept the missiles reported to Khrushchev that the
deployed missiles could be hidden by the palm trees and forests in Cuba, so
camouºage was not initially an issue and secrecy was deemed maintainable.
This explanation, then, ªts under Model II, but really emphasizes the “blun-
der” of that team and not a conception of SOP behavior.31
According to the new Essence, the Soviet forces, upon reaching Cuba, dis-
covered that the palm/forest belief was wrong-headed, but they did not
adequately adjust to the new situation. Instead, they followed the standard
operating procedure of no camouºage, a procedure developed for deploy-
ments in the Soviet Union. In addition, according to the 1999 Essence, the ªeld
29. Essence (1999), pp. 207–215, and see p. 201 (on being suggestive); cf. Essence (1971), p. 102, for
possibly more hedges about being suggestive in explaining Soviet action.
30. Essence (1971), pp. 110–113.
31. Essence (1999), pp. 210–214; cf. Fursenko and Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble,” p. 192.

organization deploying the missiles was assigned to keep the deployment

secret and to meet an early schedule (having the missiles ready by early
November 1962). Thus, this organization, in facing a tug between two compet-
ing goals of a tight schedule and secrecy, focused on the schedule, not secrecy.
The requirements of camouºage would have made installation more difªcult,
and impeded the schedule, which the organization presumably deemed more
important.32
The 1999 Essence’s interpretation seems plausible, and may even be correct.
But a critic might well comment upon how easily the book’s interpretation
slides from providing some evidence (for the palm tree/forest hope) to offering
a speculative possibility (the organization was following SOP and facing a tug
between secrecy and speed) to presenting a strongly asserted conclusion (the
schedule was emphasized, and thus camouºage ignored), while rather casually
noting that the organization understood that secrecy was important. In this
interpretive process in Essence, the theory of Model II almost unobtrusively
ªlls in the gaps, paving over the great problem of the shortage of evidence.
But unaddressed questions remain: Did the commander of the ªeld organi-
zation notice that he had competing priorities? On what basis do Allison and
Zelikow claim to know how and why the commander allegedly chose speed?
If they do know, why do they not tell the attentive reader? Or is the book’s
answer that the theory of Model II is adequate, and that evidence is unneces-
sary or marginal? Should not researchable questions in such an important book
be systematically pursued, or the reader told, at least in an informative end-
note, why the research cannot be done or what resulted from fragmentary
research?
The problem of “no shoot-down” on October 14 also raises problems. Ac-
cording to the 1999 Essence, based upon Fursenko and Naftali’s book, Khrush-
chev had wanted the SAMs to go in ªrst to protect the missiles from U-2
surveillance. Based on various plausible inferences, but no direct 1962 evi-
dence, Essence concludes that the top Soviet commander in Cuba did not know
that the SAMs were to be used to shoot down U-2s, because, says Essence, the
“standing orders” did not express Khrushchev’s intentions, since the orders
were “undoubtedly written by someone who was not present when Khrush-
chev expressed his concerns.”33
But because Allison and Zelikow are apparently unsure of parts of this
interpretation, they also offer what they frankly call an “alternative hypothe-
32. Essence (1999), pp. 213–214.

33. Ibid., pp. 214–215.

sis”: On October 14, when the U-2 did overºy Cuba, “the Soviet air defenses
[were not] sure” that there was such an overºight and they therefore did not
ªre on the U-2, because in an “uncertain situation where the appropriate
response was unclear, the organization took no action.”34
In the absence of solid evidence, but assuming that Khrushchev was not
belligerently reckless, there is another plausible interpretation. It does not rely
on Model II, and may dissolve the puzzle of why the SAMs did not shoot
down U-2s. Possibly, Khrushchev changed his mind during the summer about
the role of the SAMs, and therefore the absence of a shoot-down order was not
the product of various kinds of Model II behavior by others but, rather, of
Khrushchev’s own intended decision. Perhaps wary of provoking a U.S. attack
by the Soviets downing a U-2 near the United States, he may well have decided
against issuance of an order directing the Soviet commander to shoot down a
U-2. Thus, a Model I interpretation, especially in the absence of compelling
alternative evidence, and stated with appropriate hedges about the problems
of evidence, may sometimes be “the answer” to the puzzle.
The impossibility on the basis of available evidence of adequately explaining
the absence of a shoot-down order should remind readers of Essence of how
easily that book, by drawing upon Model II or Model III, sometimes uses a
model as a substitute for evidence. In Essence, the models do far more than
organize evidence and suggest particular “lenses” for seeing particular pat-
terns. On occasion in Essence, the models, despite the authors’ hedges, serve
virtually as substitutes for adequate evidence in some important situations. Put
bluntly, the “lens” or model creates evidence that cannot be found.
model iii’s standing and sitting: explaining actors’ positions

Having taken to heart many of the criticisms of the concept of Model III,
Allison and Zelikow provide some major revisions in the new Essence. In
places, they more fully acknowledge the importance of hierarchy and differ-
ential power among advisers, and that the president’s choice of advisers and
his efforts to set the agenda are signiªcant considerations for the analyst. In
line with earlier critics’ formulations, the new edition asserts, “Changing the
personalities, rules, relative powers, and structure of a committee can change
its behavior.”35 Of course, those are key admissions, likely to undercut the
book’s controlling notions about the importance of individuals representing
particular bureaucratic interests.
34. Ibid., p. 215.

35. Ibid., p. 287.

Most notably, the authors revised the book’s 1971 discussion of the famous
statement, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” Probably no other
sentence from that 1971 volume had attracted so much attention, and so much
criticism. Signiªcantly, the new edition explains that “depends” did not mean
“always determined by,” but instead “substantially affected by” where you sit.
That judicious retreat was long overdue, but the two authors act as if the 1971
phrasing had been reasonably precise and that somehow analysts had misun-
derstood the meaning of “depends.” In fact, the two propositions are very
different. In the 1999 version, the reformulation reads in part: “Where one
stands is inºuenced, most often inºuenced strongly, by where one sits. Knowl-
edge of the organizational seat at the table yields signiªcant clues about a likely
stand.”36
Yet, the real test would be whether even this weaker formulation usefully
explains events in historical practice when applied to evidence. On military
budgets and procurements, very probably much of the time, or at least more
often than not.37 But on missile crisis and other Cuba-related matters? Consider
the ªrst day of the missile crisis, when the standing/sitting explanation’s
difªculties are pronounced. Would Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s belli-
cose comment at the October 16 Ex Comm meeting that the United States
should ªnd a pretext, as with the Maine in 1898, and then attack Cuba,38 ªt
this dictum? Are attorneys general, by bureaucratic representation, more
bloodthirsty and more eager for war and for pretexts than other advisers?
Obviously not. This simply was RFK, sometimes a “shoot-from-the hip” guy,
at his reckless worst. Probably most of the positions uttered the ªrst day do
not ªt in a useful way the standing/sitting dictum. Random selection probably
gives better or equal results in matching statements than does bureaucratic
position.
Maybe the standing/sitting dictum, in its softened formulation, should be
systematically tested for the missile crisis. It would be an interesting but
admittedly narrow test to have some students, who do not know missile crisis
history, go through the Ex Comm minutes, with the speakers’ names removed
and some anonymous identiªcation substituted, to test the standing/sitting
dictum, if analysts can agree in advance on how to interpret that softened
version.
36. Essence (1971), p. 176; cf. Essence (1999), p. 307.

37. For a contrary conclusion in one case study on navy budgets, see Edward Rhodes, “Do
Bureaucratic Politics Matter? Some Disconªrming Findings from the Case of the U.S. Navy,” World
Politics, Vol. 47, No. 1 (October 1994), pp. 1–41.
38. May and Zelikow, Kennedy Tapes, pp. 99–101.

Would anyone be able to predict, on the basis of the standing/sitting dictum,

who, on the ªrst day of Ex Comm meetings, said that the government should
have asserted in September that “we don’t care” about missiles in Cuba instead
of announcing that the United States would not allow them? That speaker
was—JFK.39 Presumably McNamara’s emphasis on the domestic-politics threat
of the Soviet missiles did not ªt what analysts would expect, under the
standing/sitting dictum, from a secretary of defense.40 What about his great
fear of war once the missiles in Cuba became operational? It is unlikely that
analysts would expect that concern from the secretary of defense, because of
his bureaucratic position, and not from the attorney general, because of his
bureaucratic position, or instead from the secretary of state, because of his
bureaucratic position.
In many of these cases, an analyst’s sense of knowing the adviser’s concerns
about war, the adviser’s belief in toughness, and his fears about personal
credibility may be better guides to interpreting the adviser’s behavior in the
missile crisis. Maybe the dictum should be that an adviser’s personality and
general experience, far more than bureaucratic afªliation, often heavily
inºuence that individual’s perceptions and advice, especially in potentially
deadly crises.
Of course, the complexity of coming up with any comparatively simple
formulation is that important shifts occurred during the missile crisis days. For
example, RFK soon changed to plump for a blockade. And the next week
McNamara spoke brieºy of possibly attacking the missile sites in Cuba.41
Interpreting those shifts as just part of bargaining—of pulling and hauling—is
too simple and unfair.
The missile crisis was unusual—the wrong decision could mean massive
death, even nuclear annihilation. In the missile crisis, the high-level advisers
were seeking to deªne a course that would protect the United States, their
president, the alliance system, and nuclear credibility. At such a time, bureau-
cratic inºuences may have been relatively unimportant for a number of advis-
ers—most notably, McNamara, Rusk, and RFK. National Security Adviser
Bundy’s activity, because he sometimes apparently chose the role of “devil’s
advocate”42 to focus the dialogue in meetings, is hard to interpret in particular
situations. Only probing, systematic analysis, reaching well beyond Essence’s
efforts, is likely to provide rich answers in explaining the behavior of the
39. Ibid., p. 92.

40. Ibid., pp. 57, 96–97, 112–114.
41. Ibid., p. 403.
42. Interviews and discussions with Bundy.

president’s advisers during the missile crisis. That is one of the reasons why
some historians stress the importance of full-length biography to understand
“actors,” and that is why some historians argue that only through studying
the “actor” in depth, and over time, can that person be well understood in a
particular situation. For such historians, brief rules of interpretation, involving
emphasis on bureaucracy or other general formulations, are simplistic and
frequently offer dubious insights.
Theories based on bureaucratic politics suggest a mechanical way of trying
to gain leverage on very complicated subjects: Why did the president’s advis-
ers during the missile crisis act as they did, shift as they did, and align as they
did? Such theories, when reaching beyond the Joint Chiefs, who were not truly
among the president’s men, do not take analysts very far in understanding
behavior. Not to recognize this important problem is to succumb to the false
promise of questionable theory, and thus the likely illusion of understanding
what the theory cannot adequately illuminate or explain.
ESSENCE and the conception of the president: an unresolved problem

In Essence’s theoretical chapter on governmental politics in both the 1971 and
1999 editions, the president was usually not central to the analysis. And in the
applied-history chapter on governmental politics (Model III) in 1971 and even
in 1999, despite some buttressing, much of the book’s discussion swirls around
the president without focusing on him. Much of the time in Essence, his role
seems to be that of a resultant of forces, not the major actor. But the 1971 book’s
history chapter also had a few paragraphs, repeated nearly verbatim in the
1999 edition, that suggested another interpretation of the president’s role: as
the central and substantially independent decisionmaker.43
Ultimately, the revised Essence seems deeply divided, and perhaps both
unsure and unaware of its uncertainty, about how in the missile crisis history
chapter on governmental politics to conceptualize the role of the president and
his choices. Is he central and crucial, making the fundamental differences on
many matters, and thus often above the authors’ conception of governmental
politics and Model III, with its pulling and hauling? Or is he mostly caught up
in the pulling and hauling? Or is he the chief among the pullers and haulers?44
Whatever the implicit conception in Essence’s history chapter on governmen-
tal politics, and there seems to be signiªcant uncertainty in the new edition on
this fundamental subject of the president’s role, the 1999 edition’s narrative
43. Essence (1971), pp. 193–195; and Essence (1999), pp. 339–340.
44. Essence (1999), p. 328, 337–347, 354–362, 364–365.

can often be read to mean that the president has considerable autonomy. He
may choose sometimes to pull and haul, and to build coalitions and seek
near-consensus among advisers, but all the pullers and haulers always recog-
nize—and he, especially, does—that he can choose, whenever he desires, to
move to the next level: the president who ultimately chooses, and thus decides
crucial matters.
If the narrative in Essence can reasonably be read that way, maybe at least a
fourth model (“the President as Recognized and Self-Deªned Chief”) is essen-
tial. Such a fourth model would greatly improve understanding of the missile
crisis and rescue Essence from some of its major problems in explicit concep-
tualization (in the theory chapter on Model III) and in the implicit conceptu-
alization in the book’s guided narration within the applied-history chapter of
events and decisions.
problems of conceptualizing and analyzing the president’s role in

ending the crisis
The problems in Essence’s treatment of the president’s role can best be illus-
trated by focusing on the crucial events on Saturday, October 27, when the
president and his advisers collectively, including participation in three Ex
Comm sessions that day, sought to work out a strategy on how to respond to
Khrushchev’s public demand for a Turkey-Cuba missile swap as part of any
deal. The Ex Comm minutes, if taken alone, reveal vigorous opposition by key
advisers to a trade, with Bundy fearing damage to the NATO (North Atlantic
Treaty Organization) system, McNamara seeming at one point to suggest a U.S.
attack on Cuba, and RFK forcefully opposing a Jupiter deal and worrying
about injury in Latin America. Virtually alone, the most “dove-like” person in
the ªrst two Ex Comm sessions on Saturday was the president, who kept
plumping for serious support for a trade. He warned the others that the trade
would look reasonable to many people. He regretted that Khrushchev had
made the demand publicly and not privately, and Kennedy stated that war
(because the United States would not trade its Jupiters) would be an awful
mistake, that war would shatter the NATO alliance, and that the United States
might have to handle this matter unilaterally because American leaders best
understood the perils and the prospects.45
JFK’s arguments won few converts at the ªrst two Ex Comm meetings. Most
of his generally closest advisers, and especially McNamara and Bundy, seemed
strongly opposed to a public Jupiter deal; and Rusk, though not a close adviser,
45. Bernstein, “Reconsidering the Missile Crisis,” pp. 83–94.

did not seem attracted to the president’s themes. President Kennedy’s only
explicit support in the Ex Comm came from three comparatively minor advis-
ers—Ball, who was not close to JFK; Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who
was certainly not close to the president and was a marginalized man; and
Central Intelligence Agency Director John McCone, who was a Republican, not
deeply trusted, and far from the president’s inner circle. So, in short, JFK’s
opponents on the Jupiter trade were his normal allies and his highly valued
counselors on most matters; but JFK’s near-enemies (LBJ and McCone) on
many matters within the administration had become his strong supporters on
the speciªc issue of the Jupiter trade.46
Theories of bureaucratic allegiance are remarkably unhelpful in explaining
this lineup of pro- and antitraders. And certainly closeness to the president,
even on that perilous Saturday, does not explain this lineup—except perhaps
inversely. And that is really no explanation at all.
But the Ex Comm minutes, we now know, are not a good source for telling
us what of signiªcance actually occurred on that fateful Saturday on the subject
of the Jupiter trade. On that early Saturday evening, before the third Ex Comm
meeting but after the second formal session, where LBJ, McCone, and Ball had
supported the president, while the president’s key advisers had disagreed with
JFK, a key event took place. A small group of about eight men (Bundy,
McNamara, Rusk, Theodore Sorensen, RFK, Ball, Soviet expert Llewellyn
Thompson, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric) met privately
in the Oval Ofªce with the president. At that meeting, the decision was made
to accept Khrushchev’s deal privately to trade the Jupiters. RFK was sent to
meet, shortly after 7:30 P.M., with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to make
this offer and also to warn him that the crisis was becoming very perilous, that
a settlement must be speedily achieved, that the Soviets’ Saturday shoot-down
of a U-2 over Cuba was inºaming matters, that the Soviets must avoid another
shoot-down, and that this secret deal on the Jupiters was contingent upon its
being kept secret.47
That early-evening, secret meeting in the Oval Ofªce is important for various
reasons. The best available evidence indicates that the president was the
dominant person at that small session. He called the meeting, selected the
participants, and excluded about another eight men. At this meeting, the
president pushed for making the Jupiter deal, and everyone there loyally
accepted it, though some had earlier expressed serious opposition to it. On this
46. Ibid., pp. 90–91.

47. Ibid., pp. 94–96.

crucial matter of a secret Jupiter trade, a subject on which war or peace might
hang in the balance, the president was central and crucial, not just another
puller and hauler. The fact of a private deal undoubtedly met the objections of
some of the serious opponents of a public deal. But the central fact was that
the president made clear that he cared deeply about this issue, he chose the
policy, and nobody would resist him. They were the president’s men, and he
was the president.48
Conclusions
The work of Allison in the 1971 Essence in helping to popularize the uses of
organizational theory in studying decisions, and of Scott Sagan49 and others in
pursuing and reªning the theory of organizational culture, and in discovering
far more about organizational behavior in the missile crisis, are important to
all analysts. It is chastening to understand the role of unrecognized contingen-
cies, and of the difªculty, if not impossibility, for high government ofªcials,
especially in crisis, of properly anticipating or recognizing organization-caused
or related problems: organizational standard operating procedures and organ-
izational foul-ups, as well as miscommunications, can plunge a nation into
perilous situations and dangerous policies. Top leaders cannot control or ade-
quately anticipate such matters.
That useful reminder of near-disasters, by Allison and Zelikow, and by
Sagan, among others, has profound implications for understanding much of
the process, and some of the substance, of policy. Sagan,50 for example, in his
public dialogue with ardent realist Kenneth Waltz, made a powerful argument
against nuclear proliferation on the grounds that organizational culture and
difªculties of communication make deterrence unstable, because major deci-
sions on nuclear use may not be taken by top civilian leaders, but by organi-
48. Ibid.; and interviews with Bundy and McNamara. Unfortunately, no archival sources on this
secret Oval Ofªce meeting have become available, so the interpretation rests substantially on
recollections provided well after 1962. But those recollections are fully consistent with the October
27 Ex Comm minutes, which strongly indicate JFK’s interests and preferences that day. Were such
contemporaneous evidence not available on JFK’s thinking that day, there would be good reason
to discount those recollections, especially because—with the ending of the Cold War—they make
JFK look good by making him the “chief dove.” On problems of sources, see Barton J. Bernstein,
“Reconsidering Truman’s Claim of ‘Half a Million American Lives’ Saved by the Atomic Bomb:
The Construction and Deconstruction of a Myth,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (March
1999), pp. 54–95.
49. Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), especially pp. 4–155.
50. Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1995).

zations, and because top civilian leaders, when themselves trying to decide
whether to act, can be captives of highly selective information that may distort
their will and produce terrible consequences. Put simply, but bluntly, what they
do not know, or misunderstand, or are misinformed about, or cannot control
can kill them—and many others, too.
Awareness of the profoundly troubling problems, rooted in organizational
cultures and sometimes in the layering of organizations, and emphasized by
Essence’s Model II, should not, however, spill over to lead analysts to see Model
III and bureaucratic politics as the central way to explain JFK’s own crucial
choices in the missile crisis: eschewing private negotiations ªrst, moving to a
dangerous public confrontation of a quarantine, and seeking on October 27 to
settle secretly through a Jupiter-missile trade. In the 1962 Cuban missile crisis,
precisely because it was a crisis, the activities and decisions of President
Kennedy and of Premier Khrushchev were more important than was normally
the case in each government’s handling, in the early 1960s, of what might be
called ordinary business. Crises are profoundly different from ordinary times.
Crises ªx attention and make the government leader the central decisionmaker.
In understanding the Cuban missile crisis, and most U.S. foreign policy
crises that are deªned at the time as crises, analysts should regard “bureau-
cratic politics” as an arena that is worth investigating in depth, while always
remembering that the president usually makes the basic decisions—of war and
peace, and of going near the so-called precipice. Organizational actions may
take control from the president’s hands in dangerous ways. “Bureaucratic
politics”—or put more broadly and usefully, the counsel of advisers the presi-
dent largely selects—can inºuence how the president views matters and even
what the president chooses. But the large gap between advisers “inºuencing”
and “shaping” presidential decisions—a gap that Allison and Zelikow seem
only sometimes to recognize—is profoundly important. Fundamentally, the
president decides.
That is what some analysts including many historians, without explicit
models, paradigms, and lenses, have long known from deep study in the
details and documents of U.S. foreign policy, in looking at presidents and their
advisers, and in focusing upon the president’s personality, values, aspirations,
hopes and anxieties, and his background to explain important foreign policy
decisions. The president is crucial, and not just a puller and hauler. To focus
unduly on others, to make too much of advisers, to see bureaucratic politics
as the essential key to understanding presidential decisionmaking on central
matters, especially in crises, is a fundamental mistake in the development of
theory and certainly in understanding U.S. foreign policy.

In emphasizing the president, scholars should adequately recognize that

chief executives, like other people, develop attitudes, responses, and values
well before reaching middle age or beyond. Those who enter the presidency
are neither unformed nor fully formed, but they are usually largely formed.
The experience of the presidency, with its burdens and loneliness, further
shapes them.
An analysis of U.S. foreign policy decisionmaking in crisis that concentrates
on process, and not on the key person, the president, and that fails to pay
attention to the rich interpretive depth provided by biography, is a study that
greatly risks distorting understanding. Put simply, although a president’s past
does not dictate his actions in crisis or at other times, that past—and his
personal development in that past—has a strong bearing on how he judges
issues, deªnes crises, interprets dangers, perceives challenges, and chooses
policy. No analysis of decisionmaking should simply be applied biography, but
skimpy awareness of biographical matters may impoverish, and unduly con-
strict, that study. Many books on foreign policy by historians, which the initial
edition of Essence unwisely disregarded when mischaracterizing the ªeld of
history, understood this important point in their usually ad hoc interpretation
of decisionmaking and the relationship of a president to his advisers.
Without necessarily endorsing Collingwood’s epistemology, the effort at
“empathetic reconstruction” of a president’s decisionmaking requires, among
other matters, a deep understanding of that chief executive, of how he viewed
the world, and perhaps even of why he viewed it that way. The difªcult task
for model makers in studying foreign policy and decisionmaking is to deter-
mine how to link the quest for generalization and theory to the aspects of the
key decisionmaker that seem both idiosyncratic and important. This task may
be most difªcult when studying foreign policy crises, and the centrality of the
president.
Of course, President Kennedy, Bundy, McNamara, Sorensen, and others
among the president’s advisers understood in 1962, as well as before and
afterward, that many lesser decisions by the government were made without
substantial, or any, presidential attention. Many decisions on middle-sized and
smaller matters in foreign and domestic policy, and usually those involving
most procurements and many budget issues, are far removed from the presi-
dent’s focus. He usually pays little or no attention to those problems and to
their resolution. It is in such arenas, well beyond crises and major problems in
foreign policy, and often beyond major issues in domestic policy, that Essence
of Decision, in its 1971 version and in its revised edition, is most valuable for
concentrating analysts’ attention on the importance of bureaucracy.

Even when Essence failed, as it often did, in providing rigorous theory and
in explaining major parts of the Cuban missile crisis, the book also succeeded
in limited ways. It required greater awareness by the analyst of the questions
asked, and the assumptions made, about process. The volume reminded schol-
ars that process in many ways may help deªne policy. The frequent admoni-
tions and useful emphases, since the 1971 book about Models I, II, and III, and
the requirement of making clear which approach is being used, and assumed,
have helped clarify thinking in discussing policy creation.
The 1999 revised edition, even with its numerous conceptual and evidential
problems, may also help scholars think somewhat usefully about some of the
processes of decisionmaking. Ideally, however, the book’s conceptual narrow-
ness, with its deªnition of policy heavily in terms of process, will not bar them
from also reaching well beyond Essence’s restrictive formulation. Resisting the
narrowness of Essence, scholars should think deeply and critically about the
underlying values framework of major policy, and perhaps even about the class
background or social origins of major policymakers. In U.S. foreign policy, in
particular, those are dimensions that require thoughtful attention. Otherwise,
the implicit ideology of focusing on process, as Essence seems to urge, can
trammel critical scrutiny, narrow dialogue about U.S. purposes, fail to note the
comparatively similar social backgrounds of many policymakers, and block
probing analysis of the American past. When broadened inquiry is linked
systematically to the heightened awareness that the president on the large
issues often makes policy, analysts may move closer to deªning and probing
the “essence of decision.” Such an enterprise is crucial in explaining the Cuban
missile crisis.

Understanding Decisionmaking, U.S. Foreign Policy, and The Cuban Missile Crisis

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Understanding Decisionmaking, U.S. Foreign Policy, and The Cuban Missile Crisis

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Understanding Barton J.

Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of

International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 134–164

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soon became virtually an informal “bible” at various schools and especially at

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The Original Essence of Decision (1971)

situating the book in american scholarship and history

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Harvard-afªliated luminaries Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Herbert Feis, and William

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allison’s three models and explanations

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Generally, the 1971 Essence contended, by explicit argument and by illustra-

5. Essence (1971), pp. 162–178, at p. 176; see also pp. 179–210.

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6. Ibid., pp. 278–279, n. 5, and pp. 162–163.

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defining and using evidence

8. Essence (1971), pp. 149, 158–160, 194, 210–215.

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Essence approvingly quoted Neustadt: “If I were forced to choose between

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the evidential standards when he seemed to ªnd such an example as reported

evidence and theory: some issues involving model ii

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Essence of Decision (1999)

the challenges of revising ESSENCE

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rigorous form, the theory of bureaucratic politics, so presumably the reformu-

13. Essence (1999), pp. 312–313.

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the treatment of historical scholarship, epistemology, and

14. Ibid., pp. 26–29; cf. Essence. (1971), pp. 37–38.

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struction of the circumstances of choice as actually perceived by the decision

problems of theory and evidence in explaining the soviet deployment

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a single sentence states that “Cuban defense” was “a constant consideration in

the application of models i and iii in u.s. missile crisis history

23. Essence (1999), p. 108; cf. Essence (1971), p. 50.

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The revised Essence quickly—too quickly—brushes aside the possibility of

25. Essence (1999), pp. 114–115.

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ESSENCE’s use of model ii to reexamine two puzzles in soviet behavior

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organization deploying the missiles was assigned to keep the deployment

32. Essence (1999), pp. 213–214.

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model iii’s standing and sitting: explaining actors’ positions

34. Ibid., p. 215.

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36. Essence (1971), p. 176; cf. Essence (1999), p. 307.

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Would anyone be able to predict, on the basis of the standing/sitting dictum,

39. Ibid., p. 92.

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ESSENCE and the conception of the president: an unresolved problem

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