ABSTRACT
Presidents make choices regarding how centralized they are going to make the process, and, the degree of centralization has implications for the decision-making process. Thus, a president’s choice of advisory structure and level of centralization are key factors in determining how their administration will deliberate and formulate policy. If a president alone decides the direction of policy, then disagreements among advisors at the deliberative stage have little impact on the decisionmaking process. The Advisory System Framework was examined using the method of structured-focused comparisons, which presented a systematic assessment of the decision-making in the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations. Reagan’s decision-making process, is in line with a formal/low centralized system because he chose between presented options and advisors competed to get ideas presented to the president. The major finding of this work is that the administrations under examination went about formulating foreign policy according to the advisory systems theory of decision making with a few notable exceptions.
