Book Talk - Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation

Why do states start conflicts they ultimately lose? Why do leaders possess inaccurate expectations of their prospects for victory? Bureaucracies at War examined how national security institutions shaped the quality of bureaucratic information upon which leaders based their choices for conflict — which institutional designs provided the best counsel, why those institutions performed better, and why many leaders failed to adopt them.

Jost argued that the same institutions that provided the best information also empowered the bureaucracy to punish the leader. Thus, miscalculation on the road to war was often the tragic consequence of how leaders resolved 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, the book explored why bureaucracy helped to avoid disaster, how bureaucratic competition produced better information, and why institutional design was fundamentally political.

 

 

Tyler Jost is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brown University. His research focuses on national security decision-making, major power politics, and Chinese foreign policy. His research has been published in The China Quarterly, International Organization, International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly. Dr. Jost’s first book, Bureaucracies at War , won the Edgard S. Furniss Book Award from the Mershon Center for International Security, the Robert Jervis International Security Book Award and the Herbert A. Simon Book Award from the American Political Science Association, as well as the Asia-Pacific Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association. He is currently working on a second book examining major power cooperation in the modern era, focusing on the evolution of US-China relations since 1989. Dr. Jost completed his doctoral degree in the Department of Government at Harvard University and held postdoctoral fellowships at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Columbia University.

 

Lynette Ong is Distinguished Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Toronto, and Director of China Governance Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She is also a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Asia Society, and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. She is the author of three books, including Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China (Oxford UP, 2022). Her publications have appeared in leading journals, namely Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, China Quarterly, China Journal, and outlets, such as Foreign Affairs, Journal of Democracy, Economist, Washington Post, South China Morning Post, and Globe and Mail. Her research has won multiple accolades from APSA, ISA, ASA, and CPSA. She is also a recipient of the SSHRC Impact Award.