Tyler Jost’s book “Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation” (Cambridge Studies in International Relations) has been awarded the 2024 Edgar S. Furniss Book Prize.
Jost is an assistant professor of Political Science at Brown University. His research focuses on national security decision-making, major power politics, and Chinese foreign policy. His research has been published in The China Quarterly, International Organization, International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly. He is currently working on a second book examining major power cooperation in the modern era, focusing on the evolution of US-China relations since 1989. Jost completed his doctoral degree in the Department of Government at Harvard University and held postdoctoral fellowships at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Columbia University. His first book, “Bureaucracies at War,” also won the Robert Jervis International Security Book Award and the Herbert A. Simon Book Award from the American Political Science Association, and the Asia-Pacific Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association.
Book Description
Why do states start conflicts they ultimately lose? Why do leaders possess inaccurate expectations of their prospects for victory? “Bureaucracies at War” examines how national security institutions shape the quality of bureaucratic information upon which leaders base their choice for conflict – which institutional designs provide the best counsel, why those institutions perform better, and why many leaders fail to adopt them. Jost argues that the same institutions that provide the best information also empower the bureaucracy to punish the leader. Thus, miscalculation on the road to war is often the tragic consequence of how leaders resolve the trade-off between good information and political security. Employing an original cross-national data set and detailed explorations of the origins and consequences of institutions inside China, India, Pakistan, and the United States, this book explores why bureaucracy helps to avoid disaster, how bureaucratic competition produces better information, and why institutional design is fundamentally political.
Furniss Award
The Edgar S. Furniss Book Award commemorates the founding director of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University. The award is conferred on a first book in English that makes an exceptional contribution to the understanding of international, national, and/or human security.
