I always liked this quote about policymaking:
"This is the most pervasive of of all Washington legends: that politicians in Washington are ceaselessly, ruthlessly, effectively scheming. That everything that happens fits into somebody’s plan. It doesn’t. Maybe it started out with a scheme, but soon enough everyone is, at best, reacting, and at worst, failing to react, and always, always they're doing it with less information than they need.
That's been a key lesson I’ve learned working as a reporter and political observer in Washington: No one can carry out complicated plans. All parties and groups are fractious and bumbling. But everyone always thinks everyone else is efficiently and ruthlessly implementing long-term schemes."
I'm sure it's not a small circle of shadowy people that only meet at 2am and require a heavily sedated black cat for each participant, but there are plans and decisions, and actions carried out that commit the country to tens or hundreds of billions of dollars and military involvement measured in decades. Those aren't "oh gosh, what's this now? well, put some duct tape on it, I suppose" reactions.
Even a decision to go to war is full of uncertainty. Iraq I was days, Iraq II was decades. A general can never promise you it will come out one of those ways or the other.
Maybe I'm wrong though. It'd at least be nice to imagine someone has a plan and that it's not all just organic chaos.
"The Thick of It" does a good job explaining my side though -- it almost feels like a documentary for policy circles. The environment at that level is unbelievably frenetic. Getting anything done with intention is a near miracle.
But you're probably right that sometimes, at least on rare occasions, important people are able to clear off enough space to make important things happen that are long lasting with intention. I just think it's the exception, not the rule.
There's plenty in there that isn't about culture, but it's hard to parse TFA without at least skimming over the definitions of Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism.
My personal view, from someone who studied International Relations in undergrad: at the end of the day, these are all just conjectures with few real-world implications. Basically a bunch of academics trying to one up each other with the most creative, elegant and innovative model of how States operate and what drives foreign policy, despite the fact that virtually none of them have ever been in a room where the real meaningful foreign policy decisions are made, and with a very myopic view on the role that Economics / Business / Psychology shape international relations.