The Role of Analogical Reasoning in Novel Foreign-Policy Situations

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Patrick Houghton
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Hostage Crisis ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Policy Decision Making

A number of scholars have argued that historical analogizing plays an important role in foreign-policy decision making; the extent of that importance, however, remains largely a mystery to us. This article proposes that analogical reasoning is probably even more commonplace than previously thought, since it may play a crucial role even in ‘novel foreign policy situations’ (scenarios which appear largely unprecedented to the decision makers confronting them).One notable example of a novel foreign-policy situation is provided by the Iranian hostage crisis. Examining the Carter administration's decision-making processes during that crisis, the article concludes that even though many saw the hostage crisis as a unique occurrence, the participants drew upon a wide range of historical analogies in order to make sense of what was occuring and to propose suggested ‘solutions’ to the crisis.

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis. By David Patrick Houghton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 270p. $64.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 690-691
Author(s):  
Marc Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
New York ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Hostage Crisis ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
Policy Decision Making

David Patrick Houghton's U.S. Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis explores the power of historical analogies in foreign policy decision making, offering along the way an engaging, thought-provoking account of decision making during the Iranian hostage crisis. Posing the question “How do decision makers reason when confronted by a problem which seems almost entirely novel in character and therefore without precedent?” (p. 19), Houghton follows Khong's Analogies at War in arguing for the centrality of analogical reasoning. The seizure of the American embassy by Iranian student radicals presented a genuinely perplexing problem for decision makers on all sides, and Houghton captures their uncertainty well. Since decision makers can rely on different historical analogies, and even the same historical analogy can offer competing lessons or be subject to divergent interpretations, Houghton focuses attention upon the interpretive interplay of analogies. As the crisis unfolded, decision makers deliberated, directly and indirectly, over the most relevant and useful analogy. These analogies, according to Houghton, are not merely justifications for strategies chosen for other reasons but directly affect individual policy preferences by shaping beliefs about the nature of the problem. Houghton convincingly establishes the prevalence and power of historical analogies in shaping the response of policymakers to unfamiliar situations. His efforts to construct generalizable theoretical propositions about their relative causal weight are somewhat less successful but are consistently thought-provoking.

Emotions and Foreign Policy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Collective Emotions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
And Behavior

Increasingly, scholars are recognizing the influences of emotion on foreign policy decision-making processes. Not merely feelings, emotions are sets of sentimental, physiological, and cognitive processes that typically arise in response to situational stimuli. They play a central role in psychological and social processes that shape foreign policy decision-making and behavior. In recent years, three important areas of research on emotion in foreign policy have developed: one examining the effects of emotion on how foreign policy decision makers understand and think-through problems, another focused on the role of emotion in diplomacy, and a third that investigates how mass emotion develops and shapes the context in which foreign policy decisions are made. These literatures have benefitted greatly from developments in the study of emotion by psychologists, neuroscientists, and others. Effectively using emotion to study foreign policy, however, requires some understanding of how these scholars approach the study of emotion and other affective phenomena. In addition to surveying the literatures in foreign policy analysis that use emotion, then, this article also addresses definitional issues and the different theories of emotion common among psychologists and neuroscientists. Some of the challenges scholars of emotion in foreign policy face: the interplay of the psychological and the social in modelling collective emotions, the issues involved in observing emotions in the foreign policy context, the theoretical challenge of emotion regulation, and the challenge of winning broader acceptance of the importance of emotion in foreign policy by the broader scholarly community.

Foreign Policy in the Fourth Dimension (FP4D): Locating Time in Decision-Making

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan K Beasley ◽  
Andrew R Hom
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Fourth Dimension ◽  
Policy Tool ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Policy Decision Making

Abstract While international relations scholarship has taken a “temporal turn,” foreign policy decision-making (FPDM) research reveals little explicit theoretical attention to time. Time is an important aspect of several prominent frameworks, yet these either fail to make explicit their conception of time or fail to reflect upon the implications of their temporal assumptions and understandings. We address this lacuna by developing a timing perspective on FPDM. We present the central features of this perspective, including the nature of timing agency, temporal motivations, the timing of decision-making processes, and timing as a foreign policy tool. Illustrated with empirical examples, we show how timing plays out in FPDM and helps to shed new light on our understanding of crises and ways decision-makers may grapple with them. We conclude by considering the theoretical and empirical benefits and challenges of bridging FPDM with theoretical approaches to time.

Foreign Policy Decision Making

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Goldgeier
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Short Circuit ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
The Cold War

Decision makers, acting singly or in groups, influence the field of international relations by shaping the interactions among nations. It is therefore important to understand how those decision makers are likely to behave. Some scholars have developed elegant formal theories of decision making to demonstrate the utility of rational choice approaches in the study of international relations, while others have chosen to explain the patterns of bias that exist when leaders face the difficult task of making decisions and formulating policy. Among them are Herbert Simon, who introduced “bounded rationality” to allow leaders to short-circuit the decision process, and Elizabeth Kier, who has shown how organizational cultures shaped the development of military doctrine during the interwar period. The literature on foreign policy decision making during the Cold War looked inside the black box to generate analyses of bureaucratic politics and individual mindsets. Because decision making involves consensus seeking among groups, leaders will often avoid making choices so that they will not antagonize key members of the bureaucracy. Scholars have also investigated the role of “policy entrepreneurs” in the decision-making process, bringing individual agents into organizational, diplomatic and political processes. Over time, the field of policy decision making has evolved to help us understand not only why leaders often calculate so poorly but even more importantly, why systematic patterns of behavior are more or less likely under certain conditions.

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.

Trends and Perspectives of PRC's Energy Policy Making Institutions and Policies

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Chulwon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Energy Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
The Impact

The future direction of China's approach to energy policy making is, of course, difficult to predict. This is due not only to the opaque and fragmented nature of Chinese energy policy decision-making, but also to the fact that energy policy is a new topic for China's leaders and the individuals they rely on for advice to master that impinges on the interests of actors throughout the Chinese bureaucracy. The wide range of participants in the energy policy debate indicates that more diversified views on it probably reach the top leadership. The impact of the multiplicity of opinions is two-fold. It can result in more informed decision-making, but it can also delay the process as decision makers must assess a larger number of competing and sometimes contradictory views.

Foreign Policy Decision-Making

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica D. Blankshain
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Interpersonal Dynamics ◽  
The Us ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Policy Decision Making

The study of foreign policy decision-making seeks to understand how states formulate and enact foreign policy. It views foreign policy as a series of decisions made by particular actors using specific decision-making processes. The origins of this focus on decision-making are generally traced to the 1950s and 1960s, with the literature increasing in complexity and diversity of approaches in more recent decades. Foreign policy decision-making is situated within foreign policy analysis (a subfield of international relations subfield), which applies theories and methods from an array of disciplines—political science, public administration, economics, psychology, sociology—to understand how states make foreign policy, and how these policies translate into geopolitical outcomes. The literature on foreign policy decision-making is often subdivided based on assumptions about the process by which actors make foreign policy decisions—primarily falling into rational and nonrational decision-making; about who is assumed to make the decision—states, individuals, groups, or organizations; and about the influences believed to be most important in affecting those decisions—international factors, domestic political factors, interpersonal dynamics, etc. While much of the literature focuses on foreign policy decision-making in the United States, there have been attempts to apply models developed in the US context to other states, as well as to generate generalizable theories about foreign policy decision-making that apply to certain types of states.

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