Allison Recommends New Cabinet Body To Reduce Role of White House Staff

President-elect Ronald Reagan's reported plan to establish an "inner circle" of Cabinet members resembles recommendations given to transition officials by Graham T. Allison Jr. '62, dean of the Kennedy School.

Allison's proposal--which Kennedy School sources say he communicated to some of Reagan's highest aides both before and after the election--calls for a senior policy-making board composed of four members of the Cabinet. The group would be the president's most important advisers.

The formation of an "executive committee of the Cabinet"--known as Ex- Cab--would reduce the role of the White House staff and make "key Cabinet officers the primary substantive counselors to the President," Allison and Peter Szanton '52 wrote in their 1976 book "Remaking Foreign Policy."

Small Circle of Friends

In accord with the ExCab format, Reagan has reportedly selected the secretaries of State, Defense, the Treasury and the Attorney General--Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., Caspar W. Weinberger '38, Walter B. Wriston and William French Smith respectively--as his "inner ring" of advisers.

Edwin C. Meese III, the Reagan aide who will have administrative responsibility for the Cabinet, and Weinberger, a former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and a long-time Reagan adviser, are among those to whom Allison has recommended the ExCab arrangement, sources said yesterday.

The sources said Weinberger, who could not be reached for comment, supports the proposal and has suggested it to other Reagan officials. In July, Weinberger wrote Allison to compliment him on this "important and useful" proposal.

Szanton said yesterday that ExCab has two major advantages. First, it would "minimize the risk" that the president will rely on the White House staff--familiar with policy but not management--and in the process "infuriate and alienate" the Cabinet, as has happened in the past, he said.

Second, he added, Cabinet members are more likely than staff to reject impractical policies, and are more familiar with "what works and what doesn't."

A separate inner core of Cabinet advisers, meeting regularly and with an independent staff, is necessary because the full 15-member Cabinet is too cumbersome, the authors say.

"No serious discussion can take place in a group that large," Szanton, a Washington attorney, said yesterday. Allison declined comment.

Two Harvard faculty members who worked on an Institute of Politics study of the transition process--Ernest R. May, professor of History, and Richard E. Neustadt, Littauer Professor of Public Administration--called the ExCab idea "very interesting," but added that it would take a serious effort to make it work in the Reagan administration.

"Everything in the system will conspire to drive the president and that inner circle apart," Neustadt said, adding, "I don't think anything you do is going to be like sliced bread and cure all the difficulties of the system."

While Neustadt and May would not comment on the recommendations contained in the IOP transition report, sources say it contains the ideas suggested by Allison and Szanton.

While the formal creation of an Executive Cabinet may not occur, Reagan advisers have said they are receptive to the idea of strengthening the role of the cabinet and downgrading that of the White House staff.

In "Remaking Foreign Policy," the authors suggested abolishing the various White House staff groups--such as the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Staff and the White House Economic Policy Board--and forming instead a single staff under the control of the new Cabinet group.

Allison, a specialist in foreign policy, is the author of "Essence of Decision," a study of three models of decision-making with specific reference to the White House during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Szanton, a Washington lawyer, formerly served as associate director of the Office of Management and Budget and adviser to the Carter Administration on government reorganization in national security and foreign policy