Persuasion-Bargaining and Institutions in an Organized Anarchy

Abstract

A key debate in the study of the American presidency concerns the determinants of presidential decisions. Traditionally, decisions were seen as the result of persuasion-bargaining. President-centered factors, such as the preferences of the man who occupies the office and the relationships between his senior advisors determined presidential decisions. Recently, the field has made a transition to institution-based models, in which each president and his advisers are rational actors responding to the political and legal forces that frame the office. This essay suggests a research agenda that incorporates both approaches. The Garbage Can model of decision is used to illustrate how the foreign policy process is an organized anarchy; decision making is the intersection of four streams–choice opportunities, problems, solutions, and participants. The model helps identify both institutional and persuasion-bargaining variables and highlights their interactions as streams are connected to produce policy. Clinton administration decisions on trade with China in 1993-1994 are the focus. Overall, a useful metaphor for decision making is to see it as a game. Institutional forces establish the rules, define most of the players in the game and their relative power within the game; how the rules are used, manipulated, interpreted, or compromised depends on the idiosyncratic beliefs and political skills of the players involved. In this case, differing perceptions of China held within different institutions competed through a legal and political framework, but the ultimate outcome depended on the decision making and deal making skills of the key officials, including the president.

Keywords

presidency China decision making bargaining institutions

Introduction

One of the key theoretical developments in the study of the American presidency concerns explanatory models of the policy-making process. The discipline was once dominated by the persuasion-bargaining model, in which the key variables in decision making are president-centered factors, such as the preferences of the man who occupies the office and the relationships between his senior advisors. More recently, the field has made a transition to institution-based models, in which each president and his advisers are rational actors responding to the political and legal forces that frame his office. Paradigmatic shifts in scholarship, such as this “revolution in presidential studies,” rarely settle the issue (Cohen, 2009; Dickinson, 2009; Jacobs, 2009; Mayer, 2009; Moe, 2009; Rockman, 2009b; Skowronek, 2009; Wood, 2009). This article enters the debate by suggesting a research agenda that incorporates both approaches. Studying the interaction between institutional variables and persuasion-bargaining variables can provide the most accurate portrait of presidential decision making. Institutional forces create a framework within which presidents are constrained, compelled, and even empowered. Presidents react to those forces in a manner consistent with the institutional interests of the presidency, but those responses are also influenced by idiosyncratic aspects of their decision style, their policy preferences, and the relationships within the senior decision-making group. Isolating the institutional and persuasion-bargaining variables to illustrate their interaction is the purpose of this study.

The methodology of this study is twofold. First, the garbage can model of decision making is used to illustrate how the foreign policy process is an organized anarchy, in which decision making is the confluence of four streams flowing through the policy process—choice opportunities, problems, solutions, and participants (Cohen, March, & Olsen, 1972). Viewing decisions this way allows for a more open analysis of the process; both institutional and persuasion-bargaining variables can be identified, and their interactions can be highlighted as streams are connected to produce policy.

Second, Clinton administration decisions on China in 1993-1994 are used as a case study for identifying these variables and their interactions. As a result of the June 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square and subsequent government prosecution and persecution of Chinese dissidents, the U.S. cold war policy of using China to balance against Soviet power was reassessed. Though China was already being perceived by the business community as the world’s greatest economic opportunity, the George H. W. Bush administration still viewed it primarily as a strategic ally. The popular image of China, an image shared by a majority in Congress, was of a malevolent China—the world’s most oppressive government. Congress began to use legislative weapons against Chinese leaders. Widening the interpretation of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a bipartisan consensus began linking normal trading status (most favored nation or MFN) to China’s overall human rights record, essentially holding MFN hostage on a yearly basis to improvements in China’s human rights policy. President Clinton came to office seeking to change U.S. policy toward China by eliminating China’s MFN trading status as a punishment for its human rights violations. The president soon had second thoughts, however, eventually changing his mind, fighting his own party, and arguing for a complete delinkage of the issues of human rights and trade in the China case. In garbage can terms, decision making was made within a classic organized anarchy, and in an argument over whether China was a problem or a solution, the President’s perception that China was a solution prevailed.

Overall, a useful metaphor for decision making is to see it as a game. Institutional forces establish the rules, defining most of the players in the game and their relative power within the game; how the rules are used, manipulated, interpreted, or compromised depends on the idiosyncratic beliefs and political skills of the players involved and the persuasion and bargaining processes among them. Even the nature of the game may be changed by the contextual politics and the political skills of the players, which can have the effect of rewriting some of the rules—changing institutional forces—in midgame. Although it is a basic tenet of the institutional model that institutional forces shape decision makers’ actions, decision makers also try to reshape those institutional forces rather than just react to them.

The case study illustrates three specific conclusions. First, even as institutional forces create a framework for decision making and a set of powers that each player brings to the game, the interpretation of those rules and powers may be defined by persuasion-bargaining variables. The case study illustrates how both Congress and the president interpreted and reinterpreted the Jackson-Vanik amendment rules concerning trade with nonmarket economies. Second, the interaction of institutional forces is typically settled by persuasion-bargaining. President Clinton bargained with Congress, convincing it to defer legislative action in favor of presidential action in the form of an executive order. This is an example of the president’s ability to persuade Congress to allow him to take the lead in controlling the policy. Third, some influences on decision making are mixed variables, containing characteristics explained by both the institutional and persuasion-bargaining model. Time is a variable here. Some changes in decision structure are made for idiosyncratic reasons; they are methods for giving more bargaining power to certain participants’ perspectives. Over time the new structure becomes an institutional variable when its participation becomes defined by its institutional interests. The internal dynamics of Clinton decision making were shaped by the president’s desire to give economic considerations greater weight in foreign policy through the National Economic Council (NEC). The NEC quickly became an institutional force in its own right, but the president’s decision to give the NEC a lead role in decision making was based on his own idiosyncratic view of the issue.

The Persuasion-Bargaining Model Versus the Institutional Model

The modern study of the president’s role in the policy process is often dated to Neustadt’s seminal work Presidential Power (Neustadt, 1990/1960; Pfiffner, 2005). Neustadt argued that although the president has important statutory power, his real power was a power of persuasion, an art, not a science, of manipulation, bargaining, salesmanship, and political will. For this study, two key conclusions of this model become prominent. First, the president is buffeted by forces from inside and outside the executive branch, forces he can’t always control; his ability to manipulate them will define his success or failure in the White House. Second, each president is an almost idiosyncratic actor with individual strengths and weaknesses, unique decision-making needs, and an inimitable set of political skills he can use to fight political battles. Moe’s application of the “new institutionalism” to the presidency refocuses the emphasis on the role of institutional forces in the shape of decision making (Moe, 1985, 1989, 1998; Moe & Wilson, 1994). The institutional model confirms the first aspect of the persuasion-bargaining model: Presidents make policy in a potentially limiting environment where their success or failure depends on their ability to manipulate the process. However, the institutional model disagrees with the second premise; the president’s policy process adaptations to this reality are based on rational choice calculations, rather than the distinctive characteristics of individual presidents (Moe, 2009).

The Persuasion-Bargaining Model

The persuasion-bargaining model, developed from Neustadt’s ideas (also called the Public Presidency or the Governmental Politics model), begins from the premise that the person who occupies the office of the presidency matters. Three major schools of thought on decision making have developed from Neustadt’s ideas: the organization process model, the bureaucratic politics model, and the presidential management model. Importantly, each of these three models assumes that individuals and their relationships matter in unique and idiosyncratic ways.

The organizational process and bureaucratic politics models are excellent cases in point. Both see decision making as a competition between organizations or individuals who have statutory power, roles, and responsibilities in the decision-making game. In the former, organizations fight each other for their survival and their interests, presenting the president with advice that is defined by organizational culture and leaving the president as a beleaguered mediator trying to bring coherence to policy making (Allison & Zelikow, 1999, pp. 143-196; Halperin & Halperin, 1983-1984; Huntington, 1961; Schilling, Hammond, & Snyder, 1962). In the latter, ambitious and opinionated men and women vie for control of policy, while the president tries to find common ground, even as he struggles to maintain his own goals and pet policies (Allison & Halperin, 1972; Allison & Zelikow, 1999, pp. 255-324; Halperin, 1974; Halperin & Kanter, 1973). Decisions are produced through bargaining and compromise, but the president is just another bargaining player operating within this arena. The presidential management model centers specifically on the management strategies different presidents use to control and manipulate bargaining among organizations and individuals (Campbell, 1986; George, 1980; George & George, 1998, pp. 199-280; Hermann & Preston, 1994; Johnson, 1974; Mitchell, 2005; Porter, 1980; Preston, 2001). Importantly, those strategies depend on characteristics of each individual president, such as the president’s cognitive style; his sense of his decision-making strengths, weaknesses, and interests; and his orientation toward conflict (George & George, 1998, p. 201-203).

The Institutional Model

The institutional model begins from the premise that the institutional structure of the presidency is the defining feature of presidential action. Institutions limit or channel presidential action by, in March and Olsen’s words, “imposing elements of order” in the relationships inside and outside the executive branch (March & Olsen, 1984, p. 743). The rational choice aspects of the institutional model suggest that presidential actions are calculated responses to those institutional forces (Moe, 1985). In particular, three types of forces seem most relevant: constraining, compelling, and empowering.

In the area of appointments or agency design, a president seeks methods of retaining control of the executive branch despite an array of forces that try to constrain his power. Presidents may try to “politicize” an agency by packing an executive department with appointees whose loyalty is to the president and his ideology. Congress may fight back by tinkering with agency design to insulate or isolate an agency from politics, institutionalizing a more professional agenda by making an agency civil service-heavy to lessen the impact of change in presidents or political turnover in Congress (Lewis, 2003). Compelling and empowering forces are also factors in agency design. Presidents and their allies in Congress can create new agencies or bureaus that institutionalize certain missions and perspectives, thereby favoring them over competing missions and perspectives (Allison & Szanton, 1976, p. 21). Control of a new agenda can also be a source of institutional conflict. The George H. W. Bush administration battled with Congress over how to manage the new homeland security agenda after the September 11 attacks of 2001. Congress fought to create the Department of Homeland Security over the initial objections of the administration, which hoped to control the agenda through the Office of Homeland Security in the Executive Office of the President (EOP; Bolton, 2007).

Centralization of the real levers of power into the White House, at the expense of the departments and agencies of the executive branch, is a hallmark of modern presidential studies from any perspective (Burke, 1992; Hart, 1995). The president responds to forces that try to constrain him by designing decision-making structures that empower him. Scholars of the institutional model argue that centralization is a rational response to the ever-increasing demands placed on presidents by Congress, the public, the press, and the bureaucracy. The crucial piece of evidence is that every president, no matter how initially committed to cabinet government, eventually centralizes the policy process (Moe, 1985, p. 244; Weko, 1995, pp. 6-11).¹

The issue of unilateral presidential power is a placement of Schlesinger’s classic “imperial presidency” into an institutional framework—the institutional powers of the presidency as interpreted and used by modern presidents are so great that presidents can dominate policy making unilaterally, particularly in the national security context (Kleinerman, 2009; Pfiffner, 2008; Schlesinger, 1973). Though most traditional presidential scholarship focuses on the separation of powers or shared powers, the president has several unilateral tools through which he can make policy: executive orders, presidential memoranda, presidential proclamations, national security directives, and signing statements (Cooper, 2002). This idea comes in two models. First, the “administrative presidency” version focuses on the more practical side—the president’s administrative toolkit that he can use to manipulate or control policy (Aberbach & Rockman, 2009; Brandice, 2009; Durant, 2009; Krause, 2009; Lewis, 2009; Nathan, 1975; Posner & Vermeule, 2010; Rockman, 2009; Waterman, 2009). The “unitary executive” version is much broader, suggesting that during wartime in particular, presidential power is nearly absolute; checks and balances from the legislative or judicial branch that might interfere with the president’s ability to protect the nation are essentially voided (Calabresi & Yoo, 2008; Conley, 2011; Fisher, 2011; Yoo, 1996).

A Synthesis

The notion that the two approaches should be combined is not new, and studies have already proceeded along those lines (Cohen, 2009; Dickinson, 2005, p. 260; Haney, 2005, pp. 289-292; Jacobs, 2009). However, more research is needed on the interaction of the variables. A first task in such research is to identify independent variables from each model. This is necessarily an inductive process, but the brief summaries above serve as a guide to what types of influences should be examined. Independent variables from the persuasion-bargaining model are defined as any idiosyncratic aspects of the individuals in the decision-making unit and their relationships: independent and idiosyncratic policy preferences of individuals (bureaucratic politics model) and presidential attempts to manage and manipulate the process to achieve a preferred outcome (presidential management model). Independent variables from the institutional model are defined as any congressional, public, legal, or political/electoral forces that constrain, compel, or empower the president; legislative or public pressures that reduce presidential independence and flexibility; and presidential attempts to maintain executive branch control of an issue. Interestingly, organizations acting in their own interest, an aspect of the persuasion-bargaining model, are more accurately seen as institutional variables. In short, defining variables is a function of answering a question: Are the actors or players in the process behaving in a way expected by their institutional interests, or is there something unique about their behavior at that particular time in the process? From this perspective, decisions are the outcome of the interaction between institutional actors rationally calculating how best to use their resources and more idiosyncratic actors bringing unique characteristics into the process.

A Garbage Can Model

The garbage can model of decision making is an excellent tool for understanding decision making, though it is seldom used for studying foreign policy. It is particularly useful in this research design because it takes into consideration institutional and persuasion-bargaining aspects of decision making. The model is wide-open enough to include any variable that might affect a decision, yet structured enough to allow a systematic look at policy processes that are disorganized and chaotic by nature. As one of the originators of the idea explained, the purpose of the model has “always been to encourage colleagues to play with the basic ideas . . .” (Olsen, 2001, p. 192).

Organized Anarchies and Foreign Policy

The premise of the garbage can model is that some organizations or decision environments can be described as “organized anarchies” whose key characteristics are unclear goals or missions, unclear technology, and fluid participation (Cohen et al., 1972; Cohen & March, 1974, pp. 2-3). Unclear goals or missions suggests that by nature the organization’s internal and external environment is dynamic enough that the very purpose of the organization may be ill-defined, malleable, or contested. In a sense, the first characteristic—unclear mission—may be the key to understanding the “anarchy” idea that is the foundation of the model (Anderson, 1983, p. 211-212; Padgett, 1980, p. 583; Zahariadis, 2003, pp. 3-4). If an organization cannot be sure of its fundamental purpose, if it cannot answer the “why are we here?” or the “what do we want?” questions, the decision making is unmoored from its anchor, whether that anchor is based in ideas or structure or experience.

China policy provides an excellent case study of this unclear mission characteristic. Three sides of the debate can be identified. First, political realists saw China in a traditional cold war way: The problem was Soviet power, and the solution was a relationship with China based on the shared strategic interest of balancing against Soviet power in Asia (Bush & Scowcroft, 1998, p. 87-111; Lilley, 2004, pp. 297-372). When the cold war came to end throughout 1989-1991, the realpolitik argument evolved into concerns over the growing economic and military power of China: Would it eventually become the new challenger to the U.S. mission of global dominance or stability? (Bernstein & Munro, 1998; Brown, 2000; Friedberg, 2011; Marble, 2000; Terrill, 2003; Steinfeld, 2010). For many, a second perspective dominated. China’s lack of democracy, its systematized repression, and its human rights violations evolved into the central feature of most Americans’ perception of China after the televised 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown (Foot, 2001; Gilley, 2004; Shattuck, 2003, pp. 221-243; Wu, 1992). The 1992 Clinton campaign and a bipartisan group in Congress shared this view (Lampton, 2001, pp. 22-23; Mann, 1999, p. 261-262). Here the mission of U.S. foreign policy was to democratize the world, and China was the worst of the human rights problems. At the same time, a third perspective was held by more economically oriented citizens and policy makers. China was a solution to a sluggish economy in the United States. China’s economic reform policies made China an unrivaled destination for foreign investment (Bergsten, Gill, Lardy, & Mitchell, 2006; Harding, 1987; Lardy, 1998). The foreign policy mission in this sense was an adjunct to the domestic economic priority, and China’s economic reforms created the greatest boost to that mission since the end of World War II.

Similarly, unclear technology highlights a situation where the cause-effect relationship between the organization and its environment is ambiguous or in dispute, and the impact of various strategies or policy choices is speculative. This uncertainty extends to the roles and responsibilities of the units in the organization, in essence, the technology for making a decision. Debates over the utility of force, sanctions, diplomacy, or foreign aid are never-ending (Art & Jervis, 2005; George and Simons 1994; George & Smoke, 1974; Gompert & Gordon, 2008; Payne, 2001). In the case of China policy, even when political allies agree that China’s human rights violations are a foreign policy priority, they disagree on whether increased trade or economic sanctions (exact opposite policies) would be the best policy choice.

Fluid participation describes an organization in which the actors, both departmental and individual, participate inconsistently. Participation may depend on the subject matter, the importance of the decision, or the time making a decision may require. This element may be the most obvious direct link between the garbage can model and the study of foreign policy. Studies of decision making from the organization process, bureaucratic politics, and presidential management models mentioned above focus on the changing role of the president, the evolution of the national security adviser and National Security Council (NSC) staff, and the time pressures in making foreign policy. Studies also examine decision-making participants outside the executive branch, such as Congress, interest groups, the media, and the public (Hersman, 2000; Larson, 1996; Rosner, 1995; Strobel, 1997; Sutter, 1998). The participation in a decision may be the most unpredictable aspect of an organized anarchy. The China decision included the full range of participants and, as the case study below illustrates, the essence of this decision is illustrated by two fundamental struggles: the legislative-executive clash over which branch would define U.S. policy toward China and the internal organizational battle to set priorities for China policy within the administration.

Decisions in an Organized Anarchy

Decision making in an organized anarchy is the result of the confluence of four streams that flow into the organization: problems, solutions, choice opportunities, and participants (Cohen et al., 1972; Cohen & March, 1974, pp. 81-83). The problem stream consists of issues important to internal and external actors who have influence in the organization. In the case of foreign policy making, the problem stream can be anything from regional geopolitical issues, to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to cyber warfare, to economic development. The solution stream is a flow of ideas through an organization, policy solutions that may be the pet projects of internal and external actors or the standard operating procedures of organizational subunits.² The concept of choice opportunities is based on the premise that organizations are not always making decisions; however, they always do have opportunities to make decisions. These opportunities may exist as “policy windows,” specific periods of time following important events when political shifts or events make it easier to connect streams (Kingdon, 1984, pp. 173-180). The fourth stream consists of participants. The amount of effort, interest, and available time any participant can give to a decision will vary. In this sense, participants may move in and out of a decision over time.

The initial model left the method through which streams were connected deliberately vague.³ A pure form of the model described the streams as “independent” and “exogenous.” They are connected by the coincidence of time, or what is called the “fortuitous confluence” of the streams (March & Olsen, 1976, p. 27; March & Olsen 1986, p. 17; March & Olsen 1989, p. 12). Further clarifications to the model argue that decision making is a deliberate act. Participants connect the streams purposely with the intention of producing a decision at a specific point in time. These may be “policy entrepreneurs,” advocates of particular solutions or worriers of particular problems, who respond to what they see as a choice opportunity and move to connect streams (Kingdon, 1984; Newmann, 1998; Zahariadis, 1999, p. 84, 2003, pp. 12-18) or senior organizational officials who grow particularly concerned with a specific issue (March & Heath, 1994, pp. 205-206). In foreign policy, a newly inaugurated president may be both of these.

Thinking of policy making in terms of streams and their connection makes the identification of variables as institutional or persuasion-bargaining somewhat easier and also leads to the identification of variables that overlap both models. Institutional forces are typically seen as limiting or constraining the streams (Levitt & Nass, 1989; Pierson, 2000). Whether something is a choice opportunity, whether a particular solution is feasible, whether a particular problem is a candidate for resolution, and the range of participants involved, are defined by institutional forces. Connection of the streams is a rational choice response to these forces. The persuasion-bargaining model argues the opposite. The perceptions of choice opportunities, problems, solutions, and impact of participants as well as the connection or failure to connect streams are a result of the idiosyncratic factors involved in the bargaining process between the president and his advisers, among his advisers, and between the executive branch and the legislature. In particular, the ability of the president and his senior advisers to manipulate the participants and the nature of the process may be the key to the outcome of the decision (Zahariadis, 2003).

Clinton Decision Making on China, 1993-1994

The Clinton administration came to power pledging to initiate a major shift in U.S. foreign policy, nearly a complete reversal of George H. W. Bush policies in many areas, including China policy. Ultimately, after only a year and a half in office, the administration reversed its policy formally and pledged to delink the issues of human rights and trade. Whether adopting the Bush administration policy was a result of institutional forces that prevented change, or the outcome of a more idiosyncratic learning curve based in persuasion-bargaining that the new administration completed by May of 1994, is the heart of this essay. The short answer is this: a third choice is better. A combination of institutional, persuasion-bargaining, and mixed variables led to a slow but steady shift in both the administration and congressional positions on the wisdom of linking China’s progress on human rights with its trade relationships with the United States.

The case study narrative is divided into three sections. The first section provides a political context for the decision, illustrating how institutional forces, such as the election and the congressional interpretation of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, placed the China issue on the agenda. Following this section, two decision phases are analyzed. In the first, President Clinton secured a deal with Congress that allowed him to use presidential institutional powers rather than legislative institutional powers to deal with China; this switch was a decision reached through persuasion-bargaining. In the second phase, the president effectively put his finger on the scale, giving the NEC the ability to overrule internal opposition to trade with China and to take charge of the administration’s negotiations with external congressional opposition. Here President Clinton’s choice of economics as a priority was reflected in an institutional shift of the locus of decision making within the administration. Figure 1 provides a phase-by-phase identification of the variables as either institutional, persuasion-bargaining, or mixed.

Figure 1.

Identification of variables.

Decision Context

The nature of U.S. trade policy has become quintessentially Madisonian. Both the legislative and executive branches have a role to play. In the China case, the institutional factors are compelling forces—legislative requirements in the Jackson-Vanik Amendment that forced the executive branch to consider human rights concerns in the formulation of military assistance, foreign assistance, and trade policies and then receive congressional approval for that policy.

Though foreign policy issues are typically seen as the president’s responsibility, Congress had been steadily writing laws since the early 1970s to strengthen its participation in foreign trade policy, and to institutionalize its perspective on a key problem—human rights issues. A groundswell of congressional concerns over U.S. human rights policies during the 1960s and early 1970s culminated in hearings in the International Organizations Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 1973 (also called the Fraser Committee after Representative Donald Fraser, D-MN) and a 1974 report calling for the United States to take a leadership role in global human rights progress. Several recommendations from the report became law between 1973 and 1976. The new statutes linked U.S. economic and military foreign assistance programs to the human rights policies of recipient nations, even calling for the end of aid flows (except in special circumstances) if a nation’s domestic policies violated human rights norms (Forsythe, 1988; Weissbrodt, 1977).

The Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, named after Democrats Henry Jackson of Washington and Charles Vanik of Ohio, was one of these laws; it had a more precise target—Jewish emigration from the USSR (Dow, 1991; Montgomery, 1996). As détente was proceeding, the amendment was a congressional tool to compel the executive branch to link MFN trading status with the USSR (a logical result of improved United States-Soviet relationships) to Soviet willingness to allow free and unfettered emigration from the Soviet bloc. Specifically, the law states that if the “President determines” that a nonmarket economy nation “denies” or “imposes more than a nominal tax” on those who emigrate or desire to emigrate, then the “products from any nonmarket economy country shall not be eligible to receive nondiscriminatory treatment (normal trade relations) . . . and the President of the United States shall not conclude any commercial agreement with any such country.” (Trade Act of 1974, Section 402; 19 U.S.C. 2432). The law also granted the president the ability to give yearly waivers to these restrictions if he believed the waiver would accomplish the “objectives” of the law or he believed that the nation would be making significant progress. The president is required to notify Congress of the granting of a waiver in a document transmitted to both the House and Senate that explains the reasons for granting such a waiver. Congress has 60 days to pass a joint resolution that disapproves of the granting of the waiver. The joint resolution is subject to the standard legislative process—the president may veto the resolution, and Congress may override the veto.⁴ Given the flexibility in the law, scholars could debate whether the intention was to mandate consideration of human rights in certain U.S. foreign policies or to mandate congressional involvement during an era when Congress began to reassert its role in foreign affairs (Arnson, 1993; Blechman, 1990; Haass, 1979).

Persuasion-bargaining aspects are apparent in the interpretation of the law. Though the original law focused on Jewish emigration from the USSR, it was applied to all nonmarket economies. As part of the Carter administration’s normalization of relations with China in 1979, the administration signed a trade agreement with China, but also needed to grant China a waiver related to the provisions of the Jackson-Vanik amendment. Noncontroversial waivers were granted for China yearly until 1990.

However, as detailed above, the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown ended the era of noncontroversial renewal. Battles among proponents of three different priorities—human rights, the balance of power, or economic opportunity—would square off each year over the China MFN decision.

The debate initially played out in a series of showdowns between the Bush administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress from 1990-1992. The Bush administration’s post-Tiananmen sanctions were not seen as sufficiently tough on China, especially after top administration officials were sent to China to reassure its leaders (Mann, 1999, pp. 204-223; Willkie, 1994, p. 125). Bush granted China one-year waiver extensions of MFN in 1990, 1991, and 1992, and Congress fought back with bipartisan bills to place more pressure on the Chinese government over its human rights record. The United States–China Act of 1991 passed in the House in November 1991 and the Senate in February 1992, but was vetoed by Bush in March of 1992; the House overrode the veto, but the Senate did not. The United States–China Act of 1992 was passed by the House and Senate in September 1992, but was vetoed by Bush within a week. Again, the House overrode the veto, but the Senate did not (Lemon, 1990; Yang, 2000, p. 92-110).

As a candidate, Clinton had viewed China as a problem and trade pressure as the solution; he had linked Chinese progress in human rights with continuing China’s MFN status, as had the 1992 Democratic Convention Platform (Lampton, 2001, p. 33; Shattuck, 2003, p. 227). The choice opportunity of the election empowered Clinton to fulfill his commitment to place human rights at the top of the agenda for China policy.

First Phase (January 1993-Spring 1993)

During this first phase, the Clinton administration had to decide how to fulfill its campaign promises regarding China or perhaps whether it even wanted to fulfill them. In either case, dealing with congressionally-mandated institutional forces remained the policy-making challenge. In the end, the Clinton administration successfully used persuasion and bargaining to buy itself some time for a basic review of China policy. This window for decision was even more essential than for the average incoming president. Democrats had been out of the White House for 12 years; moving from opposition to leadership would take time.

One of the most important aspects of decision making for the new administration was creation of the NEC. The NEC was a cabinet-level council headed by the president that included the vice president, the secretaries of all the major economic departments (state, treasury, agriculture, commerce, labor, housing and urban development, transportation, energy), the Environmental Protection Agency head, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the Assistants to the President for Domestic Policy, Science and Technology Policy, and National Security Affairs (Clinton, 1993a). Most important may have been the creation of an assistant to the President for Economic Policy and the NEC staff, whose sole purpose was to analyze economic issues and keep the economic perspective front and center in administration decision making. President Clinton accomplished this by executive order, using his unilateral institutional powers over staffing matters.

At first glance, this is evidence of an institutionally based power—a president’s freedom to organize the executive branch and the EOP almost any way he desires, to manipulate and structure the participant stream. However, the president’s ability to reshape the EOP and White House Office is best seen as mixed variable, with characteristics that make it explainable by persuasion-bargaining as well. Just because a president has the power to do something (an institutional power) does not mean he will use that power and does not define how he might use it once he chooses to do so. The creation of the NEC is an example of a specific perspective being institutionalized by an organizational innovation (Destler, 1996). The choice of that perspective is a result of idiosyncratic factors—President Clinton’s unique focus on economic issues, reflected in the administration’s shifting post cold war priority on economics. Over time the NEC then functioned as an institutional force in its own right or through the persuasion-bargaining lens of the organizational process model. In garbage can terms, the president created an important new participant and then gave it a key role in the process of connecting streams.

Incoming administrations typically take about nine months to set the groundwork for its foreign policy processes and to establish of strategic priorities—definitions of threats to the United States and the policies the administration will use to defend against them. The persuasion-bargaining model is based on the assumption that these priorities are the result of compromise between organizations, individuals, and the president. The Clinton administration unveiled its strategic approach in a series of speeches in the fall of 1993 (Albright, 1993a, 1993b; Christopher, 1993; Clinton, 1993b; Lake, 1993). Ultimately, these early ideas were developed into a set of strategic principles that embodied the “Clinton Doctrine.” The terms engagement and enlargement (or En-En) became the Clinton strategy analogs for containment.⁵ Six strategic imperatives formed the foundation of Clinton’s foreign policy as explained in speeches and strategy documents: strengthening the alliance of liberal democracies; assisting former communist states to make the move from command economics and dictatorship to capitalism and democracy; reducing the threat of rogue state sponsors of terrorism or proliferators of weapons of mass destructions; integrating the big emerging markets into the world economy and taking advantage of the new economic opportunities they provide; dealing with human rights violations, the lack of democratic development, and humanitarian crises; and reinforcing multilateralism by developing a post cold war international norm on multilateral action to resolve crises and emerging problems. Each can be seen as a problem and a solution; however, two perspectives on China were embedded into the En-En doctrine. It was both a gross violator of human rights and the biggest of the big emerging markets. Priorities had to be decided.

The first task was to decide how to decide. A January 1993 Presidential Review Directive on China (still classified) established the China Steering Group, an interagency committee headed by Winston Lord, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and a former U.S. Ambassador to China under the Reagan and Bush administrations, who had broken with the Bush administration over its post-Tiananmen Square policy. The group was charged with making a policy recommendation in time for the president to inform Congress of his renewal decision by June 3. The debate within the Steering Group became a two-sided argument between the agencies and individuals that favored putting human rights first (China as a problem) and those that leaned toward an economics-first policy (China as a solution), an institutionally or organizationally-defined battle. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, and Lord favored conditional renewal, but with a principled stand on human rights. The business-oriented bureaucracies—the departments of commerce and treasury, the NEC staff, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)—feared what the loss of MFN or only partial renewal of MFN would do to U.S. business investment in China. At the NSC staff, Berger, a former trade lawyer, had more sympathy for the economic team’s argument than did Lake. The defense department was skeptical about the effectiveness of threats concerning MFN and more concerned with China’s strategic role in East Asia (Lampton, 2001, pp. 35-37; Mann, 1999, p. 295; Tucker, 2001a, pp. 253-54, 2001b, pp. 46-48; Shattuck, 2003, pp. 224, 242). President Clinton was not a fully active member of the decision process during the first few months of this review (Lampton, 1994, p. 601).

The inability to develop consensus within the China Steering Group resulted in a manipulation of the participant stream, a decision to bypass the formal interagency process by establishing a second parallel decision group that did not include the economic agencies. This informal working group, composed of state department and NSC staff representatives, began to develop the policy that would establish the Clinton method of linking trade and human rights (Suettinger, 2003, p. 166). Lord headed both the formal and informal groups.

Congress itself was somewhat divided, with some members seeing China as a human rights problem (Representative Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] and Senate Majority leader George Mitchell [D-ME]), and others as a strategic and economic solution (House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton (D-IN) and Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) of the Senate Finance Committee). When it seemed clear that Congress would have the votes to pass conditional renewal legislation—calling for China to make significant progress on human rights or face MFN restrictions or revocation—the administration began negotiating with congressional leaders, including Pelosi and Mitchell, hoping to fend off a strict legal timetable for China that might tie the administration’s hands before it reached a bureaucratic consensus. In spite of this effort, in April Mitchell and Pelosi introduced companion bills for the United States–China Act of 1993, calling for conditional one-year renewal of China’s MFN and a deadline for improvements of June 1994 (Dietrich, 1999, pp. 286-287; Yang, 2000, pp. 117-120).

The administration’s internal lack of consensus led it to desire flexibility and control of the policy over other considerations. It fought back against a congressionally-led policy determined by the Jackson-Vanik amendment and used an institutional power of the presidency (an executive order) as a substitute for the institutional power of Congress. Direct negotiations between Lord, members of the NSC staff, and Pelosi and Mitchell led to an executive-legislative agreement. The deal was sealed in May: in exchange for Congress withdrawing its conditional renewal bill, the president signed Executive Order 12850 on May 28, 1993, giving China one year to make significant progress on human rights or potentially lose its MFN status. The executive order specified benchmarks for China’s improvement in human rights, similar to those in the Pelosi-Mitchell bill, that included free emigration from China and Chinese adherence to United States–Chinese agreements on prison labor as well as five additional areas where China needed to show progress: greater adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, religious and cultural freedoms for Tibet, an accounting of those Chinese citizens arrested as a result of the Democracy Wall and Tiananmen Square movements, humane treatment of its prison population, and permission for international radio and television broadcasts to be allowed into China (Clinton Administration, 1993b; Lampton, 2001, p. 41; Shattuck, 2003, p. 231; Suettinger, 2003, p. 167).

The administration used the fact that all the key players were Democrats to persuade Congress to leave the policy in the president’s hands. Both administration flexibility and Democratic solidarity were maintained. Democratic hard liners on China could believe that Clinton had fulfilled his campaign promises, and Lord could argue that the Executive Order would serve the purpose of moving “the MFN debate from the center of our China policy” (Awanohara & Wu, 1994; Mann, 1999, p. 281).

Second Phase (Summer 1993-Spring 1994)

By the time of the institutionally mandated deadline in June of 1994, a strong centrist group had developed within the administration and Congress that believed that maintaining ties with China was the solution to a host of problems (strategic and economic) and that U.S. pressure on China over human rights was a self-inflicted wound that threatened more than twenty years of an evolving United States–Chinese relationship. In a clear illustration of the interplay of persuasion-bargaining and institutional variables, the economic bureaucracies were given the upper hand by the president, and the NEC perspective effectively became administration policy through an NEC-NSC-led process. Whether that is a rational choice-based centralization of the process or an idiosyncratic presidential management of the process depends on the scholarly perspective.

The nature of the administration’s debate over China began to change in the summer of 1993. If the purpose of the Executive Order was to give the administration a chance to build a consensus, two important developments moved the administration toward that goal. First, relationships between the United States and China continued to deteriorate over the summer. Continued human rights violations, controversies over Chinese sales of M-11 missiles to Pakistan and possible Chinese chemical weapons assistance to Iran (later proven to be false), fears that the People’s Liberation Army was beginning to view the United States as the enemy, and a general defiant and nationalistic stance by China over most U.S. demands on human rights and security led Lord to conclude that United States–China relationships were on a “downward spiral.” This assessment and a conclusion that the administration had to place human rights into the mix as one of many important issues in United States–China relationships and not first among equals was a key part of a strategy paper developed through the interagency process and submitted to the White House in July (Sciolino, 1994; Williams & Smith, 1993).

The result of administration debates in August at meetings of the Principals Committee (PC, a subcommittee of the NSC that included all NSC members except the president and vice president) was an “action memorandum” signed by the president in September 1993. The paper is seen as the birth of the comprehensive engagement strategy through which the United States would work with China in a more balanced fashion, one that considered the full range of issues—human rights, economic ties, proliferation, and stability within East Asia (Greenberger & Frisby, 1994; Lampton, 2001, p. 42; Suettinger, 2003, p. 178). In essence, Lord was arguing that the policy was failing. Lord’s assessment ran counter to his institutional ties; it is an idiosyncratic aspect of his participation explained best by the persuasion-bargaining model.

Along with Lord’s new analysis of the situation, the second important development, another persuasion-bargaining variable, was a change in the president’s opinion and role once the action memorandum reached the Oval Office. Clinton saw greater trade and investment with China—the biggest of the big emerging markets—as one of the central components of his economic policy (Sciolino, 1993). Clinton’s greater role in the process led him to set priorities and settle the built-in contradictions of the En-En strategy. The practical results included a meeting between Lake and Chinese Ambassador Li Daoyu in the White House where Lake explained the new administration approach, trips to China by senior U.S. economic officials, and a critical meeting between President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Seattle (Mann, 1999, p. 290; Williams & Smith, 1993).

Throughout the winter and spring of 1993 and 1994, the human rights-first group was outflanked by those who favored the comprehensive approach and the importance of economic ties. By early 1994, the economic team was publicly criticizing the administration’s linkage of trade and human rights and encouraging the business community to lobby Congress in favor of delinking the issues. It was also lobbying the president to change his mind (Tyler, 1999, pp. 403-404, 2001, p. 460). While the economic team was described as “virtually in open revolt” about the possibility of restrictions on MFN, the state department, still favoring a human rights-led policy, saw disarray in policy making, even suggesting that every agency had its own policy at that point and that the president’s role could best be described as one of “silence” and “passivity” (Mann, 1999, p. 295; Shattuck, 2003, pp. 243-244, 256).

The nature of democracy adds interest groups as a participant, particularly in the case of a policy that is decided in full view of the American public with sharp battle lines and legislative deadlines that add all possible drama to a very non-dramatic process. The business interest groups, such as the National Association of Manufacturers and Business Coalition for U.S. China Trade, had been lobbying Clinton on China trade since before he was elected. This lobbying continued throughout 1993 and 1994 (Awanohara & Wu, 1994, p. 16; Destler, 1995, pp. 233-234; Dietrich, 1999, p. 286).⁶ A growing bipartisan centrist movement had developed a critical mass to block any legislation that would take away or restrict China’s MFN status (Dietrich, 1999, p. 291; Greenberger & Frisby, 1994; Lampton, 1994, pp. 605-609). Like the administration, a congressional consensus was emerging that better ties with China were the solution and current U.S. policy was the problem.

China itself sent clear messages to the United States. While in Seattle for the APEC meeting, President Jiang visited a Boeing plant (Lampton, 1994, p. 605). The clear statement that China was one of Boeing’s best customers and that many American jobs depended on trade with China were not lost on anyone. China also responded with defiance, lashing out against the United States, lecturing the United States about minding its own business, explicitly rejecting the linkage policy, and arresting high-profile dissidents (Shattuck, 2003, pp. 244-272).⁷

Secretary Christopher’s March 11-14 trip to China was the final nail in the coffin of the linkage policy. From March 11 to March 14, the Chinese subjected Christopher to scolding after scolding, a humiliation for Christopher and the United States. The policy was even attacked during Christopher’s meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce in China (Suettinger, 2003, . 188). A key sign of things to come was the president’s unwillingness to defend Christopher as the Chinese leadership berated him in front of the world (Christopher, 2001, pp. 238-240; Suettinger, 2003, pp. 190-191; Tyler, 1999, pp. 407-410).

At a March 22 PC meeting, none of the principals defended the linkage policy, and it seemed to have died a quiet death (Christopher, 2001, p. 242). The president did not attend the meeting. The results of the meeting reflected a new consensus within the administration; the issue was no longer about the severity of sanctions, but how little the administration might be required to do to bury the policy and save face. The state department—the major proponent of the policy—was somewhat isolated in its subsequent efforts to maintain even a partial linkage of human rights and trade. Soon after the meeting, the NSC and NEC staffs took the lead role on China policy. Lake and NEC Director Robert Rubin even set up an NSC-NEC committee chaired by Berger and NEC Deputy W. Bowman Cutter, whose job it was to develop a politically marketable explanation for the change in policy (Shattuck, 2003, pp. 277-278; Suettinger, 2003, p. 192). This a sharp contrast to the earlier period when the informal group excluded the economic bureaucracies. This represents both a centralization of the process (institutional) and a presidential decision to manage the process by tipping the internal balance of power in favor of the economic bureaucracies (persuasion-bargaining).

An indication of how far the decision-making structure had changed was a May 18 meeting between Clinton and senior White House officials that did not include any members of the state department. The dominance of the NEC and its perspective is a mixed variable; the exclusion of state department officials was a deliberate choice to eliminate a perspective, a persuasion-bargaining variable. The meeting with Lake, Rubin, Berger, Cutter, and White House advisors Thomas McLarty, David Gergen, and George Stephanopoulos may have been when Clinton settled the issue. At a May 23 PC meeting, Christopher gave his final report on China’s progress toward meeting the requirements of the Executive Order, stating that while China had met the emigration and prison labor standards, it had not done enough in the five additional categories. In spite of these results, the administration, led by Clinton, lobbied Congress and put the finishing touches on a policy to delink the issues (Lampton, 1994, p. 617; Sciolino, 1994; Suettinger, 2003, pp. 194-196).

On May 26, 1994, the president announced that he intended to delink trade and human rights in United States–China policy. The logic the administration used in explaining the policy was similar to what critics of the policy had been saying: the best way to maintain leverage that might change China’s human rights policies was through continued dialogue and deeper relations (Clinton, 1994).⁸

Though Clinton had been consulting with Congress and the shift toward delinkage was clear, there were many who felt that linkage of MFN and human rights was still the best policy toward China. Despite frequent discussions and a fifty minute phone call between the president and representative Pelosi, the leader of the prolinkage Democrats in the House, the administration realized that it would still face a legislative challenge. The administration failed to convince Pelosi and Mitchell to give up on linkage legislation. Each introduced a version of the United States–China Act of 1994 that placed sanctions on a range of products made by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and some state-owned enterprises. Representative Gerald Solomon, a Republican, submitted legislation to strip China of its MFN, a version of a bill he had introduced annually since 1989 that had never passed. Representative Hamilton also introduced a bill that supported the Clinton policy of extending MFN for another year. The Solomon and Pelosi bills were defeated in the House (75-356 and 158-270, respectively), while the Hamilton bill passed 280-152. The Mitchell bill was never voted on in the Senate (Yang, 2000, pp. 141-143). Executive-legislative bargaining had produced a consensus, but not everyone was a part of it. Institutional forces gave Congress a role, and presidential persuasion had been mostly successful. The president could not prevent a legislative challenge led by his own party, but he could beat back that challenge.

Conclusions

This case study illustrates how research that focuses on the interaction of institutional and persuasion-bargaining variables presents a dynamic picture of decision making, allowing for the inclusion of variables based on the political acumen, cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and small group phenomena of the decision-making group, rather than a purely rational choice approach. The conclusions of this study support “analytical eclecticism,” the notion that different research paradigms or traditions should not be seen in isolation, but as complementary approaches that provide more accurate, even if more complex, answers to social science questions (Suh, Katzenstein, & Carlson, 2004).

Specifically, three conclusions flow from this idea. The institutional model should more explicitly incorporate the notion that different institutions will interpret their powers differently. As the case study illustrates, the original intention and the actual text of the Jackson-Vanik amendment became irrelevant as Congress searched for leverage to influence China policy. This is not rational choice decision making; it is better described as politics. Institutional forces may depend more on the eye of the beholder than is typically acknowledged by the model. When it comes to executive-legislative relationships, both scholars and practitioners are still arguing over fundamentals, such as exactly what powers belong to the president and what powers belong to Congress (or the states). The one distinguishing characteristic of all powerful presidents has been an executive-heavy interpretation of the institutional division of labor, one that gives the president immense leeway and the ability, in President Wilson’s words, “to be as big a man as he can be. His capacity will set the limit” (Wilson, 1961/1908, p. 70). How big the president can become depends on persuasion-bargaining, Neustadt’s original thesis. Sticking too closely to a rational choice version of the institutional model makes it difficult for the institutional model to explain, for example, how the array of legislation and congressional reorganization aimed at ending the “imperial presidency” tied Presidents Ford and Carter in knots, yet allowed President Reagan to dominate his era in many ways (Rudalevige, 2005). Considering variables such as the political skills Reagan brought to the White House, skills that eluded Ford and Carter, provides a more complete explanation.

This relates to the second conclusion: As institutional forces are not always clearly defined and different interpretations of institutional powers are the norm, persuasion-bargaining best explains how those disagreements are resolved between and within institutions. President Clinton’s sharp political instincts allowed him to negotiate successfully with Congress to use an executive order rather than legislation in 1993. He provided himself with more time to make the decision and used that time to manipulate the internal decision process, elevating the NEC over the state department and centralizing the process in the NEC-NSC committee. The choice of institutional tools here matters, and the choice is best explained by the persuasion-bargaining model. President Clinton was manufacturing a preferred outcome by stacking the deck with those who shared his economic priorities. In contrast to this case study of a microscale battle over power to make foreign policy, Skowronek’s (1993) macroscale thesis suggests that over time institutional regimes, including the accepted definitions of the institutional balance of power between Congress, the courts, the presidency, and the states, are subject to reinterpretation by powerful presidents who fight to “reconstruct” governing relationships. That reinterpretation is the result of political battles best explained by the persuasion-bargaining model. Over time that winning reinterpretation becomes institutionalized, ultimately acting as the constraining, compelling, and empowering forces within which decisions are made (until the battle over the next political era begins). Several other studies echo the importance of the interplay of constitutional interpretation and political talent as a key factor in empowering the President over Congress (Howell, 2003, pp. 8-14; Howell & Pevehouse, 2007; Mayer, 2001, pp. 3-30).

A third conclusion adds a bit of complexity to these notions. Some variables are mixed; defining them as institutional or persuasion-bargaining is difficult. As much as scholars would like to develop neat and clean categories for analysis, reality can be analytically messy. The role of the NEC is illustrative. While it may have been created out of an idiosyncratic motivation, it became an institutional factor over time. This overlap between the organizational process model and descriptions of institutional forces makes classifying the NEC a subject of dispute. If the NEC acts from a rational calculation of its interests, then the institutional model is accurate. If the NEC acts out of a sense of organizational culture and seeks to bargain with other institutions, even acting idiosyncratically at times depending on its leadership and the predilections of the president, the persuasion-bargaining model is accurate. The fact that it was created to enhance a specific perspective lends weight to the persuasion-bargaining model. Further case studies that include mixed variables are not likely to settle the issue.

Though the institutional model may have begun an important “revolution” in presidential studies that adds rigor to theory development and methodologies, it has one immense hurdle to overcome. Presidents and their senior advisers, those who have actually made the decisions that scholars study, are absolutely, positively certain that they are exceptional and unique actors and that decision making under each president is a completely idiosyncratic experience. One way of resolving this dilemma is to base research on the proposition that the institutional and persuasion-bargaining models are more useful in tandem than they are as competing paradigms.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

William W. Newmann is an Associate Professor in the Political Science program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has published Managing National Security Policy: The President and the Process (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003) as well as articles on national security, homeland security, and the US Presidency in Presidential Studies Quarterly, Public Administration Review, and Strategic Studies Quarterly.

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