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My paper proposes a model of bureaucratic policy innovation. The models that scholars have suggested to date explain some cases but not others. We need a model with broader explanatory power. Most bureaucracies that failed to innovate had tinkered with the new idea. Based on this insight, I assume that entrepreneurs are ubiquitous, and focus instead on variation in organizations’ ability and willingness to advance new ideas.

I model a government as a 2-level system in which each level is characterized by 3 independent variables: capacity, identity, and risk propensity. I posit two innovation mechanisms:

(1) The 'bottom-up' dynamic yields innovations that, when implemented, rely almost exclusively on the organization that advanced the idea. The prerequisites are:

(a) an organizational capacity for advancing new ideas, determined by structural features of the decision process that balance information gathering and decisiveness (so that new ideas can “float up” but are not efficiently 'filtered out')

(b) an identity based on a broad organizational purpose (rather than on specific technologies, tasks, or missions)

(c) a willingness to accept risk (only catalyzed by a serious bureaucratic challenge that threatens the organization’s identity)

(2) The 'top-down' mechanism yields innovations that require joint effort by several organizations to implement them. The prerequisites are:

(a) a capacity for advancing new ideas, as above

(b) an identity based on how strongly the leadership is tied to the status quo power structure

(c) a willingness to accept risk (only catalyzed by a serious political threat) This model explains many aspects of bureaucratic innovation that have puzzled scholars to date:

- why some bureaucracies or governments innovate while others do not

- why a particular bureaucracy or government can innovate at one times but not another

- why innovations seem to be of two types—single-agency or joint.

I demonstrates the model’s plausibility by explaining historical cases drawn from disparate areas of U.S. policy. I show that the 'bottom-up' innovation mechanism explains both the development of strategic employment doctrine by the U.S. Air Force in the Cold War and advances in pure food and drug regulation by the Department of Agriculture in the early 1900s. The 'top-down' mechanism explains introduction of ballistic missiles as the principal instrument of strategic deterrence in the 1960s as well as New Deal agricultural policies of the 1930s.

Stream: Change

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

*Academic Accomplishments:
- B.S. Ocean Engineering, U.S. Naval Academy (1974)
- M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University (1980)
- M.A. National Security Studies, Georgetown University (1991)
- National Fellow, Hoover Institution (1994-1995)
- Ph.D. candidate, Harvard University (2002- )
*Current Research Interests:
- bureaucratic policy innovation, organizational transformation, characterizing governments and bureaucracies as institutionalized decision-making processes