You are the leader of a country. Recently, a leaking foreign-owned tanker caused a serious oil spill in international waters near your country. You need to take immediate action that involves getting your country to act and getting cooperation from nearby countries and perhaps the United Nations. According to the organizational/bureaucratic politics model, what difficulties might you face?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary, but should show a thorough understanding of the organizational/bureaucratic politics model. This model emphasizes that governments are bureaucracies with several hierarchical levels. At many levels, workers just do business as usual and are not used to dealing with exceptional situations. Also, many departments compete against each other. In the above scenario, I could face a situation where several departments want to handle the situation in different ways according to their various levels of expertise. In addition, some might want to ignore getting international aid and just solve the problem. Others might want the country of origin of the leaking tanker to bear the brunt of the cost. Getting all these groups to cooperate in formulating an efficient plan of action will be a challenge. Also, coming up with a unique, prompt solution might be difficult because many departments function by following standard operating procedure. As a leader, I might have to cut through a lot of red tape to get something done.