Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation

The Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM) and the Department of Government and Politics invite you to a special event talk by Professor Tyler Jost on Thursday, October 10 at 2:00pm in Chincoteague 2113.

Dr. Jost's talk is based on his forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, Bureaucracies at War. Why do states start conflicts they ultimately lose? Why do leaders possess inaccurate expectations of their prospects for victory? The book examines how national security institutions shape the quality of information upon which leaders base their choice for conflict – which institutional designs provide the best counsel, why those institutions perform better, and why many leaders fail to adopt them. Jost argues that the same institutions that provide the best information also empower the bureaucracy to punish the leader. Thus, miscalculation on the road to war is often the tragic consequence of how leaders resolve the trade-off between good information and political security. Employing an original cross-national data set and detailed explorations of the origins and consequences of institutions inside China, India, Pakistan, and the United States, this book explores why bureaucracy helps to avoid disaster, how bureaucratic competition produces better information, and why institutional design is fundamentally political.

Tyler Jost is Assistant Professor of Political Science, International & Public Affairs, and Watson Institute Assistant Professor of China Studies at Brown University.