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# Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis

## Details

**Authors** Allison, Graham T.

**Year** 1969

**Publisher** American Political Science Review

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Political Science

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.2307/1954423) 
10.2307/1954423

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To show that foreign policy analysts rely on implicit conceptual models, and to test what different models explain about one case, the 1962 decision to blockade Cuba.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

One case: the United States decision during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

### How they did it (methods)

Three conceptual models are applied in turn to the same event: Model I (rational policy), Model II (organizational process) and Model III (bureaucratic politics).

### What they found (results)

Government action is better understood as the product of a conglomerate of large organizations and political actors than of a single rational decision-maker. Each model yields a different explanation of the same event, because each adopts a different frame of reference and directs attention to different facts. Allison concludes that the choice of model has consequences for how analysts conduct research.

## Commentary

### In short

The paper shows one object described from three positions, each of which changes what is visible. Two of the three models break the government into parts (organizations, then individual players) and explain the whole by how those parts interact. The third treats it as a single actor.

**Patterns it shows** S, R, P

Shows the structure is there, Shows it makes a difference

**Added** 2026-10-11

**How to cite this** Allison, Graham T. (1969). Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis. American Political Science Review.