ALLISON'S BUREAUCRATIC MODEL

'Does President Obama's decision to increase US troop levels in Afghanistan by 30,000 support Allison's bureaucratic model of US foreign policymaking? Or is there a better explanation?'

Abstract

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in November 2008 was an event of global significance. Departing from the usual format of the Political Geography Specialty Group plenary lecture (co-sponsored by the publisher of this journal, Elsevier Science) at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, the editors asked four international board members to present their views on the meaning of the Obama victory for US relations with the countries of their respective regions at the annual meeting in Las Vegas, NV in March 2009. Their commentaries were later updated to reflect the early months of the Obama presidency and are presented here. The common themes of a hopeful break with the unilateralist policies of the Bush administration are contrasted to the constraints of domestic and international conditions on the actions of the new Obama administration in each essay. Each commentator is thus quite skeptical of the ability of the new administration to meet the inflated expectations of the populations of the various regions.

Table of Contents

Abstract2

'Does President Obama's decision to increase US troop levels in Afghanistan by 30,000 support Allison's bureaucratic model of US foreign policymaking? Or is there a better explanation?'3

Chapter I: Introduction3

Chapter II: Literature Review3

Views on Obama's presidency and Afghanistan's future3

Obamamania and the South Afghanistan elections3

Chapter III: Lessons in contexts3

Initial Analysis3

Will the election of Obama bring about any real “change” in East Asia? a Japanese perspective3

Pre-election concern3

Little “change” for Japan3

“Change” from Japanese Democrats3

Chapter IV: Discussion3

Obama's post-imperial America? a view from the South3

The violence and culture of imperialism3

Empire in decline3

Foreign affairs, Obama-style: a break from American imperialism, or in service of it3

Chapter V: Conclusion3

References3

'Does President Obama's decision to increase US troop levels in Afghanistan by 30,000 support Allison's bureaucratic model of US foreign policymaking? Or is there a better explanation?'

Chapter I: Introduction

Little has been written by historical geographers or historians of geography about either the Allison Commission or the national mapping program which it, ultimately, endorsed, a program which arguably persists to the present day in different forms. In a broad survey of U.S. government mapping policy from 1800 to 1925, Edney has situated the Allison Commission, and its treatment of mapping projects, in terms of the evolving structures of federalism in American politics. Edney's characterization of the politics of federal scientists during the late nineteenth century as the struggle to convince legislators (especially those in the Democratic Party) of the utility of their work provides a useful frame for interpreting the commission's political dynamics, but his claim that 'there was not a national mapping policy at any time before 1925' is, I argue, overly polemical. In any case, it was not the conclusion reached by Senator William Allison, the Iowa Republican, who was chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and also chaired the joint commission. In its own investigation of the historical, legal and ...