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.

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.

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.

Decision-making and the Munich crisis

1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Black
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Policy Alternatives ◽  
Recent Edition ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
United States Intervention

It is now twenty years since Richard Snyder and two associates published a monograph presenting their “framework” for studying international relations as foreign policy decision-making. The basic assumptions of this approach have become an indispensable part of the study of international relations. No-one would now think of ignoring the important processes by which groups of leaders formulate and choose among policy alternatives. Yet the approach itself has been relegated to subsections of surveys of the field, or dismissive footnotes. Although James Rosenau's influential anthology, International Relations and Foreign Policy, still retains three “decision-making” selections in its most recent edition, Rosenau himself pronounced a respectful epitaph for this approach some years ago. Glenn Paige's initial, massive study of the United States' intervention in Korea has had no successors.

SOUTH AFRICA'S EMERGING PARLIAMENTARY DIPLOMACY AND SOFT POWER

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley Masters
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Policy Decision Making

This analysis considers the emergence of South Africa's parliamentary diplomacy, or the role of Parliament on the international stage, since 1994. The early discourse both within Parliament and in academic analysis, reflects an emphasis on the role of oversight and the role of Parliament in the foreign policy decision-making process. Recognition of the role of parliamentary diplomacy has been slow to develop, although Parliament is increasingly acknowledging its role as an international actor. This has seen the development of structures and policy to support this. The value of parliamentary diplomacy as part of a country's international relations, however, remains an area in need of further deliberation. This analysis begins by unpacking the concept of parliamentary diplomacy before addressing the emerging role and value of parliamentary diplomacy for South Africa, particularly through the linkages between parliamentary diplomacy and soft power in promoting foreign policy.

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.

International Law and Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel H. Westra
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Legal Compliance ◽  
State Behavior ◽  
Transnational Actors ◽  
Policy Decision Making

Policymakers regularly face decisions pertaining to the making of international law and compliance with international law. International relations scholars have attempted to explain the broad patterns of state behavior that emerge from such decisions by approaching international lawmaking and international legal compliance from the perspectives of state power, interests, and identity. These explanations reflect the growing interdisciplinary connections between the study of international law and the study of international relations. Although there have been fewer interdisciplinary connections between the study of international law and models of foreign policy decision-making, closer examination of each of the main international relations approaches to international lawmaking and international legal compliance suggests corresponding models of foreign policy decision-making. Further work remains to develop these connections and to incorporate transnational actors and processes into the analysis of foreign policy decision-making. Such work has both scholarly and practical relevance, insofar as foreign policy decision-making takes place in an increasingly legalized international environment even as the existing, post–World War II international order faces increasing challenges from nonliberal states.

Processes of Dyadic Choice for war and Peace

1995 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Russett
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
International System ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Military Force ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Realist Analysis ◽  
Policy Decision Making

This essay reviews three recent books on foreign policy decision making. Collectively, they sharply modify conventional realist analysis by emphasizing the possibility of choice, the necessity of analyzing relationships at the level of a dyad of states rather than at the level of either individual states or the entire international system, and the cognitive processes by which choices are made. But their substantial challenge to realism falls short of the next step necessary, namely, more fully developing a theory of how domestic political processes affect the choice of whether to use military force.

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