Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy Decision-making in Nigeria

Abstract

The original proponents of the bureaucratic politics model, Graham Allison and Morton Halperin, thought that while their model was the most satisfactoy way of explaining foreign policy outcomes for industrialised countries, it was inapplicable to the study of non-industrial countries [1]. In a recent study of foreign policy decision-making in Africa, Christopher Clapham has endorsed their view, adding that ‘bureaucratic approaches to decision-making derived from more institutionalised political systems clearly fail to apply’ [2]. He added that what matters in the foreign policy decision-making of African countries is the personalities of individual leaders rather than the character of bureaucratic institutions [3]. I disagree with such arguments, given the contemporary situation in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular.