Chapter 3 Bureaucracy

3.1 Discussion questions

  • Are sanctions effective? Did any of the readings change your answers from last week?

  • What are sanctions according to Pape? How is it different from Baldwin’s definition (according to him)? Should sanctions include coercion for economic purposes? What is Paper’s stance? Why according to him?

  • What is the research question of Bapat & Kwon 2015? Why is it puzzling? What do they mean by sanctions success? How is this related to Pape 1997? (Note that you should feel free to skip over their formal model section pp.136-149)

  • What are the determinants of sanction success/effectiveness? How about other tools of economic statecraft, such as foreign aid? (*)

3.2 The decision making process

Here is a graph of the core structure. Note that I do not include the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Foreign Affairs Office of the State Council. As Zhao (2020) notes, the former plays a role in “foreign policy consultation and parliamentary diplomacy.” The latter “is primarily an administrative setup to supervise local foreign affairs offices and coordinate routine matters involving foreign affairs for the top leaders.”

See below for notes of the acronyms. I also include their Chinese names for your reference.

PSC: Politburo Standing Committee (政治局常委)

FAC: Central Foreign Affairs Commission (中央外事工作委员会). Established in 2018 to replace the Central Foreign Affairs Leading Small Group (FALSG, 中央外事领导小组).

NSLSG: Central National Security Leading Small Group (中央国家安全领导小组)

FAO: Foreign Affairs Office (中央外事办公室)

ILD: International Liaison Department (中联部)

PD: Publicity Department (中宣部)

MFA: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (外交部)

MOC: Ministry of Commerce (商务部)

GSD: General Staff Department (总参). Disbanded in 2016 amid the military reform and replaced by the Joint Staff Department (联合参谋部).

3.3 Domestic politics

Sun 2017 talks about the MFA. Wu 2021 talks about FAO.