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Meena Bose, Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy: The National Security Decision Making of Eisenhower and Kennedy. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1998. Pp. 197. $29.95, hardcover.
A persistent debate in national security policy studies pits questions of how leaders define and analyze problems (process) directly against questions of how leaders actually fashion particular strategic approaches (policy). The field of scholarly work on national security decision-making is saturated with analyses of the former set of questions. The latter represent a scholarly path less traveled, with policy science's relevance to the practical world of policy-making suffering as a result. Fortunately, in this book Meena Bose journeys along that less-traveled path and in doing so helps bridge the gap between policy as science and policy as practice, thereby providing fresh insights for decision makers and national security scholars alike.
Bose examines national security decision-making during the administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, work based on her Ph.D. research, which won her the Best Dissertation on the Presidency prize, sponsored by the Center for Presidential Studies at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.
This discussion expands the existing literature on presidential decisionmaking processes by focusing specifically on presidential leadership styles, the nature of presidential advisory systems, and the communication of presidential policies. As Bose states, "[P]olicy making and policy communication merit coordinated analysis because of their complementary effects on political outcomes... a carefully made policy that is in principle well suited to achieve its purposes may go awry if poorly communicated. And a poorly designed...