Framing the National Interest: The Manipulation of Foreign Policy Decisions in Group Settings

1990 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeev Maoz
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Group Discussion ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Individual Preferences ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Group Settings ◽  
Crisis Conditions

Social psychologists have long attempted to explain the group-induced shift phenomenon: that it is impossible to predict group choices from knowledge of individual preferences prior to group discussion, and that individuals change their choices during group deliberations. Most explanations of group-induced shifts have focused on substantive changes in individual preferences induced by group dynamics. This study explores the possibility that individual preferences do not necessarily change in the course of group discussions. Rather, decision makers may switch their choice in part because one or more individuals manipulate the decision-making process in a manner that helps them achieve their desired outcome. The study distinguishes between rational and nonrational variations of decisional manipulation and considers examples of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy choices under crisis conditions to illustrate such processes. The implications of these ideas for the study of foreign policy decisions are discussed.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Bay Of Pigs

This chapter describes widespread skepticism regarding the value of assessing uncertainty in international politics. “Agnostics” argue that assessments of uncertainty in international politics are too unreliable to be useful for shaping major foreign policy decisions. “Rejectionists” argue that attempting to assess uncertainty in international politics can be counterproductive, surrounding foreign policy analyses with illusions of rigor or exposing foreign policy analysts to excessive criticism. “Cynics” claim that foreign policy analysts and decision makers have self-interested motives to avoid assessing uncertainty. The chapter explains how these ideas lead many scholars, practitioners, and pundits to avoid holding careful debates about the risks surrounding major foreign policy choices. The chapter describes how this aversion to probabilistic reasoning appears in several high-profile cases, such as President Kennedy’s decision to authorize the Bay of Pigs invasion and President Obama’s decision to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Intervention and Intransitivity: Public Opinion, Social Choice, and the Use of Military Force Abroad

1995 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Taylor Gaubatz
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Public Preferences ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The Impact

This article argues that the problems identified in the literature on public choice should critically affect our research on public opinion and our understanding of the impact of public opinion on foreign policy. While a robust literature has emerged around social choice issues in political science, there has been remarkably little appreciation for these problems in the literature on public opinion in general and on public opinion and foreign policy in particular. The potential importance of social choice problems for understanding the nature and role of public opinion in foreign policy making is demonstrated through an examination of American public attitudes about military intervention abroad. In particular, drawing on several common descriptions of the underlying dimensionality of public attitudes on major foreign policy issues, it is shown that there may be important intransitivities in the ordering of public preferences at the aggregate level on policy choices such as those considered by American decision makers in the period leading up to the Gulf War. Without new approaches to public-opinion polling that take these problems into consideration, it will be difficult to make credible claims about the role of public opinion in theforeignpolicy process.

Analysis and Decision

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-186
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Risky Decision ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

This chapter explains how decision makers can incorporate assessments of uncertainty into high-stakes foreign policy choices. It begins by describing a simple analytic tool called break-even analysis, with which leaders can use explicit probability assessments as a point of leverage for determining whether or not a risky decision is worthwhile. The chapter then explains how transparent probabilistic reasoning is especially important for assessing strategic progress. In some cases, it can actually be impossible to make rigorous judgments about the extent to which foreign policies are making acceptable progress without assessing subjective probabilities in detail. This argument departs from a large body of existing scholarship on learning in international politics that assumes leaders can use a straightforward logic of trial and error to determine how they should update their strategic perceptions over time. The chapter provides examples of these dynamics drawn from the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Image Theory and the Initiation of Strategic Rivalries

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manjeet S. Pardesi
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
International System ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Image Theory ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Domestic Affairs

The assessment of an opponent as a strategic rival is analytically equivalent to evaluating its strategic image. The central decision-makers of states reevaluate the image of other regional states and the great powers of the system in response to strategic shocks, as they have an impact on interstate interaction capacity. Interaction capacity in the international system can be affected by three types of changes—military, political, and economic. A strategic rivalry is a process that initiates when the central decision-makers of at least one state in a dyad ascribe the image of an enemy to the other as a consequence of such shocks. It is important to empirically demonstrate the ascription of these images through a cognitive process because strategic rivalries are a function of decision-maker perceptions by definition. Four types of enemy images are identified here—expansionist states, which are territorially revisionist; hegemonic states, which circumscribe a given state’s foreign policy choices; imperial states, which intervene in a given state’s domestic affairs in addition to being hegemonic; and peer-competitors, who pose latent and/or long-term threats. Once formed, these images are sustained over long periods of time and change only slowly in response to additional strategic shocks. These images also inform the strategy that a given state pursues toward its rival.

Explaining Self-Defeating Foreign Policy Decisions: Interpreting Soviet Arms for Egypt in 1973 Through Process or Domestic Bargaining Models?

1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 759-766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Anderson ◽  
Margaret G. Hermann ◽  
Charles F. Hermann
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Bargaining Models ◽  
Level Model ◽  
Causal Sequence ◽  
Level Process ◽  
Two Level Model

How should we explain why a state sometimes adopts a foreign policy in one region that interferes with its concurrent policies elsewhere? In their article in the March 1989 issue of this Review, Stewart, Hermann and Hermann proposed a three-level process model of foreign policy to explain such Soviet behavior towards Egypt in 1973. The analysis has continuing interest because it interprets the puzzling behavior as a manifestation of general problems of information processing in making foreign policy choices. Richard Anderson suggests that a two-level model of domestic bargaining better accounts for the causal sequence in Soviet-Egyptian relations and is in general more parsimonious. Margaret and Charles Hermann defend their substantive analysis and argue in any case for the complementarity of process and bargaining approaches.

Prospect Theory and Political Decision-Making

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Gross Stein ◽  
Lior Sheffer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Prospect Theory ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Probability Distributions ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Political Decision Making

Prospect theory has been adopted unevenly across different domains of political decision-making. Research drawing on prospect theory has contributed to important advances in the understanding of processes of elite decision-making in foreign policy and domestic politics. Political scientists have also contributed several important extensions of and qualifications to prospect theory that augment the original theoretical framework and are applicable in other disciplines. The next wave of research needs to be far more careful in specifying the scope conditions that have been the focus of research in behavioral economics. Scholars will also have to pay closer attention to the distribution of probability estimates across options; whether political decision makers are choosing among risky/certain bimodal distributions, high-probability distributions, high/low distributions, or low-probability distributions matters to the predicted impact of framing effects. Finally, studies will need to pay greater attention to the information political decision makers are given and to the impact of group dynamics in political settings. Identifying the scope conditions of prospect theory in the context of political and policymaking processes over time can make a significant contribution to the explanation of both domestic and foreign policy decisions, fill a gap between individual-level choice and institutionally based outcomes, and provide a stronger behavioral foundation for understanding the dynamics of multiactor policy choice.

To Intervene or Not to Intervene? Democratic Constraints on Third-Party Support in Civil Wars

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Casper Sakstrup ◽  
Jakob Tolstrup
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Institutional Characteristics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Party Support

Abstract Do democracies and autocracies differ when it comes to whether and how they provide third-party support to warring parties in civil wars? We argue that the political institutions of potential third-party states have important consequences for both questions. We emphasize how three particular institutional characteristics of democratic polities constrain decision-makers. This makes democracies less likely than autocracies to intervene in intra-state conflicts in general, and less likely to provide combat-intensive support specifically. An empirical analysis of incidents of third-party support to actors in civil wars in the period 1975–2009 corroborates the overall argument, although the results regarding support types are less clear. These results have important implications not only for our understanding of civil wars but also for how foreign policy decisions are made across different regime contexts.

Archival Research in Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Implicit Theories ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Advisory Group ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
Psychological Evidence

Although more scholars have used archival evidence to analyze foreign policy in recent years, relatively little has been written on the methods involved in using archives as well as the evidentiary value of different types of documents. Analyses of foreign policy decisions often make use of narratives or process-tracing. Process-tracing should uncover the causal mechanisms wherever possible in order to explain foreign policy decisions. Primary sources are extremely useful in uncovering causal mechanisms, whether public opinion, bureaucratic politics, advisory group dynamics, or psychological processes. Through archival evidence, the researcher can capture how policymakers perceived the world at the time, unbiased by hindsight, and their calculations. Because psychological evidence shows that people do not necessarily know what influenced their decision, scholars should not necessarily take at face value the reasons that policymakers give for their actions. It is useful for political scientists to carry out their own archival research because historians have different implicit theories and may not gather data of relevance to the theories being tested. In addition, through examining the documents, political scientists may be able to discriminate between competing historical interpretations of the same event. It is important to interpret documents within their historic, situational, and communication contexts. The document’s place in the policy process—the sequence of memos and discussions—helps to determine its meaning and impact on the final decision. In order to interpret statements that are apt to be biased by instrumental motives, the investigator should consider who said what to whom under what circumstances and with what purpose.

Metaphors and Analogies as Heuristics in Policymaking

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qingmin Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
Conceptual System ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Heuristic Reasoning ◽  
The Mind

Metaphors and analogies are two of the most popular heuristics utilized by decision makers, promoting an unconscious inference into the realm of rationality within the mind. A master of metaphor and analogy, the late leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mao Zedong, offers an illuminating example of such heuristic reasoning. Analyzing the metaphors and analogies most frequently invoked by the PRC leader, this chapter demonstrates that Mao’s conceptual system was highly metaphorical. While historical analogies explain Mao’s heuristic reasoning for China’s revolutionary diplomacy, his use of metaphors reveals how stereotypes influenced his understanding of his enemies, which in turn explained and shaped China’s major foreign policy decisions. Mao’s use/misuse of metaphors and analogies also showcases their fallacies, mainly their tendency to exaggerate similarities and move from the realization that something is like something else to assuming that something is exactly like something else.

scholarly journals The EU’s Difficulty in Translating Interests into Effective Foreign Policy Action: A Look at the Ukraine Crisis

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Ross Smith
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Policy Action ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Domestic Setting ◽  
Ukraine Crisis ◽  
The Eu

Abstract The EU’s foreign policy response(s) to the unfolding Ukraine crisis has further illustrated its difficulty in making effective foreign policy decisions. Using a neoclassical realist analytical framework, this paper argues that although the EU did have tangible collective interests in pursuing its Ukraine foreign policy, it was unable to adequately filter these through its domestic setting. Three key constraints to the EU’s Ukrainian foreign policy> were identified: decision-makers ’ miscalculations; rigid normative demands; and a reliance on consensus politics. Ultimately, the Ukraine crisis illustrated that the EU, in current incarnation, cannot translate interests into effective foreign policies, even when making policy for their direct neighbourhood.

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