Thomas Tait

Thomas Tait is a recipient of a 2025 CAPS Undergraduate Summer Thesis Research Grant. His proposed thesis is entitled, “Bureaucratic reform and leader learning in the United States after foreign policy failure.”

Proposal synopsis: The central question of my thesis asks: when is bureaucratic reform undertaken after foreign policy failures, and what explains the variation in the extent of bureaucratic reform? My thesis aims to take the first step in filling a glaring gap in the research, aiming to achieve two main goals. First, to establish a descriptive theory of the circumstances that create bureaucratic reform. Second, to examine the causal mechanisms that result in the variation within reform.