Academic Work

YES! I finished my finals and I will be traveling to Lake Tahoe to ski for a week! Exciting man. At the same time, I feel obliged to share with you guys some of my academic work from my Politics and Public Policy class. This memo is about applying three models- rational actor, organization and bureaucratic politics to an incident in daily life. Enjoy the crapping :)


This memo analyzes the choice of the dining hall by a group of college students going for lunch, using Allison’s models of rational actor, organization and politics.

The rational actor model: Having studied in the Regenstein library all morning, we were standing at the exit, deciding on the best place to eat lunch. It was more rational to go to Pierce, as the distance between the library and Pierce was shorter than that of BJ’s, thus saving time traveling and energy for classes in the afternoon. Furthermore, the quality of food should be superior in Pierce, as all of us knew that a celebrated chef was making a guest appearance there. A longer traveling time to the more crowded BJ, meant a delay in obtaining our food. Hence, it would be more rational to go to Pierce as we did not have our breakfast and wanted to quickly fill our stomachs. Yet, in the end, we went to BJ for lunch, illustrating that the rational actor model is insufficient in explaining our decision.

The political model: Rational thinking would lead us to Pierce for lunch; however, there was a strong advocate among us who wanted to go BJ. He wanted to go there to interact with a girl he was interested in. With power over some of my friends as he was helping them in mathematics, they did not want to antagonize him. Although I tried to persuade the group to go to BJ, as the venue of my next class was nearer to Pierce, my view was discounted. This was because in the past, I had brought them to restaurants with mediocre food. Hence, despite my objection, the collective decision was to go to BJ.

The organizational model: This model favors the decision to go to BJ. There was a strong inclination to go to BJ, as we had been going there prior to this meal. With a set menu and predictable, satisfactory food, the group did not mind going to BJ. Furthermore it was risky to go Pierce; there was no guarantee that the food there would be better. Upon deciding to go to BJ, we decided to cycle there. While this could be interpreted as a rational decision, as cycling was faster and less tiring that walking, this was not the case. Due to routine, as we had been cycling from one part of campus to another, we cycled to BJ for lunch.

In conclusion, Allison’s political and organization models explain how a seemingly irrational decision to go to BJ from Regenstein could be made plausible. By applying them, we better explain the decision to go to the dining hall using new paradigms.