Research

Why do democratic leaders politicize foreign policy bureaucracies? Existing scholarship acknowledges that leaders and bureaucracies often do not see eye-to-eye but characterizes such conflicts as a struggle of presidential willpower to overcome bureaucratic inertia, organizational biases, and parochial interests. This article advances a theory of politicization that accounts for both the strategic and ideological reasons behind when and why leaders attack their foreign policy bureaucracies rather than simply bypassing or cooperating with them. I argue that leaders who distrust foreign policy bureaucracies because of ideological, partisan, or social conflicts preceding their tenure and have consolidated their political position are more likely to politicize by appointing loyalists, sidelining careerists, and reshaping institutional rules. Using a comparative design leveraging within- and cross-case variation and detailed process-tracing of archival records, memoirs, speeches, and secondary histories, I probe this theory through a comparative analysis of Indira Gandhi in India (1966–1975) and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey (2002–2016). Both leaders entered office with deep mistrust of their foreign policy establishments but pursued politicization only after consolidating power. This article broadens our understanding of politicization, the range of tactics available to leaders in exerting control over the foreign policy bureaucracy, and the implications of these actions for foreign policy. Working paper available upon request.

Abstract: We draw on the comparative politics literature’s distinction between programmatic and clientelist parties to argue that certain programmatic parties are significantly more likely to emphasize foreign policy ideology in both internal and external messaging—even when these foreign policy issues have limited salience with the public. Using process-tracing and text-as-data methods on a novel corpus of all national political party manifestos in India since 1952 as well as historical party documents, we show that programmatic parties—such as India’s right-wing and communist parties in the 1950s–1970s—actively promoted foreign policy ideology to distinguish themselves from rivals and mobilize their party base. In contrast, patronage-based, catch-all parties like the Indian National Congress were far less inclined to do so. This research contributes to our understanding of how parties use foreign policy as an electoral tool and the extent to which such ideological commitments shape their behavior once in office. Working paper available upon request.

Conventional accounts in international relations often portray national security bureaucracies as inherently hawkish, pushing political leaders toward military conflict. This paper challenges that assumption, arguing instead that most defense and foreign policy bureaucracies exhibit a bias toward caution and favor preserving the status quo. Drawing on cases from the United States and India, it explores how leaders with expansionist or aggressive ambitions confront this institutional restraint. I identify three strategic pathways leaders employ to navigate bureaucratic caution: accommodation, exemplified by George H.W. Bush’s responsiveness to military concerns during the First Gulf War; circumvention, as seen in Richard Nixon’s choice of covert action over direct intervention in Chile in the early 1970s; and outright defiance, as in Rajiv Gandhi’s unilateral deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force to Sri Lanka in 1987. These responses reveal the enduring tension between leaders’ political agendas and the bureaucratic imperative for restraint, with significant consequences for the efficacy and legitimacy of foreign policy.

This article concerns the role of nuclear bureaucracies in obstructing bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements that might limit or reverse a state’s military nuclear program. Conventional wisdom suggests that state actors, including nuclear agencies, view “nuclear weapons as political tools used to advance parochial domestic and bureaucratic interests.”[1] We can infer that these agencies, populated by scientists who operate autonomously and with access to copious state resources, will strenuously oppose initiatives that would place constraints on their nuclear programs. Yet governments operating under the international nonproliferation regime may find it desirable to agree to a diplomatic deal to curb or reverse their nuclear programs in exchange for international legitimacy, economic sanctions relief, and other symbolic or material benefits. When do powerful nuclear bureaucracies act as spoilers to these initiatives? I argue that, while there are organizational incentives to oppose these agreements, nuclear bureaucrats can be persuaded to support them through material benefits. Assistance with nuclear technology and infrastructure, built-in protections for long-term research and development, and the transfer of nuclear materials can all make such agreements appealing to potential spoilers. The project will draw on interviews I have already conducted with Indian policymakers involved in finalizing the Indo-U.S. civil nuclear agreement, as well as archival and interview data on other cooperative nuclear agreements. This project has significant policy implications for the design of future such agreements.