ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to test the validity of the bureaucratic politics paradigm by placing these inquiries in perspective and applying the paradigm to Soviet management of the Czechoslovak crisis in 1968. The general argument of the bureaucratic politics paradigm can be summarized as follows: Soviet foreign policy actions do not result from a single actor, the Politburo, rationally maximizing national security. The methodology of the bureaucratic politics approach used does not suggest that purely abstract institutional and organizational interests motivate Soviet foreign policy actions. The decisions of some senior decisionmakers who are less influenced by organizational parochialism are characterized by uncommitted thinking. The political crisis in Czechoslovakia, which initially appeared to be only a power struggle, shaped up in several months as a struggle for a more pluralistic concept of socialism. During the crisis a deadline imposed by circumstances, together with the requirements of consensus-building, had an impact on coalition formation.
