Political Gaming and Foreign Policy Making during Crises

1977 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 610-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mandel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Rand Corporation ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
National Governments ◽  
Crisis Situations

This article evaluates one means—political gaming—for coping with the distorted processes and perceptions that are present in foreign policy making during crises. Political games are exercises in which teams representing national governments meet and discuss crisis situations presented in scenarios. American foreign policy makers have engaged in this activity since the late logo's at the RAND Corporation, M.I.T., the Pentagon, and the C.I.A. Several hypotheses are developed on the changes in decisionmaking processes generated through political gaming, and on the nature of international perceptions during crises, as reflected through political gaming. These hypotheses are evaluated by means of data from the only unclassified professional-level games on international crises (those at RAND and M.I.T.), from a series of student games conducted at Yale, and from insights gained by the author's direction of two C.I.A. games. The results show that political gaming is indeed effective in improving decision making during crises, and they introduce some new aspects into accepted wisdom about international perceptions during crises.

The Nixon-Kissinger Foreign Policy System and U.S.-European Relations: Patterns of Policy Making

1975 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilfrid L. Kohl
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Economic Policy ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Process Model ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Organizational Process ◽  
Royal Court

No single model adequately explains the American foreign policy-making process. At least six models are required, singly or in some combination, to understand recent American foreign policy formation under the Nixon Administration. The six models are: democratic politics, organizational process/bureaucratic politics, the royal-court model, multiple advocacy, groupthink, and shared images or mind-sets. After a review of the rules of the foreign policy game in Washington and the main elements of the Nixon-Kissinger National Security Council system, the article seeks to apply the models to a number of cases in recent American policy making toward Europe. U.S.-Soviet relations, the “Year of Europe,” and Nixon's New Economic Policy of August 1971 are examined as cases of royal-court decision making. A second category of cases exhibits mixed patterns of decision making: SALT, the Berlin negotiations, U.S. troops in Europe, MBFR, and U.S. trade policy. Bureaucratic variables alone explained policy outcomes in international economic policy making in the autumn of 1971, and an organizational process model was found to be dominant generally in the formation of recent international monetary policy, led by the Treasury Department. The conclusion considers the relationships between the models and certain kinds of policies.

Decision-Making in American Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolas K. Gvosdev ◽  
Jessica D. Blankshain ◽  
David A. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy

scholarly journals La complexité de valeurs dans la politique étrangère de l'administration Reagan face à l'Iran

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-551
Author(s):  
André Lecours
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Classic Problem ◽  
A Value ◽  
Complexity Problem

The formulation of a policy that will satisfy several values and interests more or less compatible is a classic problem of political decision making. This phenomenon by which there can be, in a foreign policy issue for example, several divergent values and interests was named value-complexity by Alexander George. When facing a value complexity problem, a decision maker must choose some values and some interests over others. The choice he makes will not necessarily be the one made by other decision makers. This can result in a serious impediment to the decision making process. The American foreign policy towards the Middle East faced, for the major part of the Cold War era, a value-complexity problem because it looked to reconcile four hard-to reconcile values and interests. The Reagan government was confronted rather acutely with this problem in the making of its Iranian policies. The administration was split in at least two factions over Iran : one who thought primarily of containing the Soviet Union in the Middle East region and the other for whom the political stability of moderate regimes threatened by revolutionnary Iran should be the most important priority. The existence of these factions, consequence of value-complexity, produced the making and the implementation of two distinct Iranian policies.

Searching for an Exit: The Effects of Context, Process and Structure on Crisis Negotiation

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-406
Author(s):  
Michael J. Butler
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Conflict Management ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
International Crises ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Crisis Negotiation ◽  
Foreign Policy Crises ◽  
Crisis Situations

Abstract By virtue of their defining criteria, international crises would seem unlikely candidates for conflict management and resolution. However, negotiations among crisis protagonists are not uncommon. Such behavior may reflect a desire to ‘exit’ the crisis dynamic. This article takes up the question of when and in what circumstances actors engaged in crisis situations turn to negotiation. Through an empirical analysis of over 1000 cases of foreign policy crises occurring between 1918 and 2015, this research examines a set of potential contextual, processual and structural correlates of crisis negotiation. The results of this analysis indicate that negotiation is less likely to occur in complex, high stakes, and especially violent crises, suggesting that negotiation is an unlikely and perhaps ill-suited response to more intense and severe crises.

Environmental Policies for Emergency Management and Public Safety

2019 ◽  
pp. 903-922
Author(s):  
Amidu Owolabi Ayeni
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Community Participation ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Green Policy ◽  
Or Organization

Policy refers to the commitment of people or organization to the laws, regulations, and other green mechanisms concerning environmental issues. Community participation has become important in government, policy makers, and environmentalists over last few decades, and as a result, it is now an established principle as it is widely used not only in academic literature but in policy-making documents, international discussions, as well as in local debates when considering issues dealing with decision-making to achieve sustainable development. Implementation of green policy and community participation programs through representatives—organization, groups of individuals—enhances the benefits of polices and program and adds value to policy as well as making the policy's results and responses more effective and stronger.

7. America in the 1990s: searching for purpose

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dumbrell
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
External Environment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
First Year ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
International Environment ◽  
The Us ◽  
Internal Pressures

This chapter examines how the external environment of US foreign policy and internal pressures on policy makers both shifted radically in the 1990s. Internationally, the ‘long 1990s’ were characterized by intense democratic possibility. Yet they were also years of atavistic negativity and irrationality, as seen in Rwanda and Bosnia. Two questions arise: First, how should the United States respond to a world which was apparently both rapidly integrating and rapidly disintegrating? Second, was it inevitable, desirable, or even possible that the US should provide global leadership? Before discussing various approaches to these questions, the chapter considers the wider international environment of apparent unipolarity and globalization. It also analyzes the development of American foreign policy under presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, focusing in particular on the so-called ‘Kennan sweepstakes’ during the first year of Clinton’s presidency as well as Clinton’s turn towards unilateralism and remilitarization.

Feminist Perspectives on Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie D'Aoust
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
The Impact

Foreign policy analysis (FPA) deals with the decision-making processes involved in foreign policy-making. As a field of study, FPA overlaps international relations (IR) theory and comparative politics. Studies that take into account either sex, women, or gender contribute to the development of knowledge on and about women in IR, which is in itself one of the goals of feminist scholarship. There are two main spheres of feminist inquiries when it comes to foreign policy: the role of women as sexed power holders involved in decision-making processes and power-sharing in the realm of foreign policy-making, and the role of gendered norms in the conduct and adoption of foreign policies. Many observers insist that feminism and foreign policy are linked only by a marriage of convenience, designed to either acknowledge the political accomplishments of women in the sphere of foreign policy such as Margaret Thatcher and Indira Ghandi, or bring attention to so-called “women’s issues,” such as reproduction rights and population control. Scholarship on women and/or gender in relation to foreign policy covers a wide range of themes, such as the role of women as political actors in decision-making processes and organizational structures; women’s human rights and gender mainstreaming; the impact of various foreign policies on women’s lives; and the concept of human security and the idea of women’s rights as a valid foreign policy objective. Three paradigms that have been explored as part of the study of women in comparative politics and IR are behavioralism, functionalism, and rational choice theory.

scholarly journals Politics, policy-making and the presence of images of suffering children

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-608
Author(s):  
Helen Berents
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Visual Politics ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
Political Dimensions

Abstract In 2017 Trump expressed pity for the ‘beautiful babies’ killed in a gas attack on Khan Shaykhun in Syria before launching airstrikes against President Assad's regime. Images of suffering children in world politics are often used as a synecdoche for a broader conflict or disaster. Injured, suffering, or dead; the ways in which images of children circulate in global public discourse must be critically examined to uncover the assumptions that operate in these environments. This article explores reactions to images of children by representatives and leaders of states to trace the interconnected affective and political dimensions of these images. In contrast to attending to the expected empathetic responses prompted by images of children, this article particularly focuses on when such images prompt bellicose foreign policy decision-making. In doing this, the article forwards a way of thinking about images as contentious affective objects in international relations. The ways in which images of children's bodies and suffering are strategically deployed by politicians deserves closer scrutiny to uncover the visual politics of childhood inherent in these moments of international politics and policy-making.

scholarly journals Missing in Analysis: Women in Foreign Policy–Making

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-141
Author(s):  
Karen E Smith
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Policy Decision Making

Abstract Foreign policy analysis (FPA) opens the “black box” of the state and provides explanations of how and why foreign policy decisions are made, which puts individuals and groups (from committees to ministries) at the center of analysis. Yet the sex of the decision-maker and the gendered nature of the decision-making process have generally been left out of the picture. FPA has not addressed questions regarding the influence of women in foreign policy decision-making processes or the effects of gender norms on decision-making; indeed, FPA appears to be almost entirely gender-free. This article argues that “gendering” FPA is long overdue and that incorporating gender into FPA frameworks can provide a richer and more nuanced picture of foreign policy–making.

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