Which lessons matter?: American foreign policy decision making in the Middle East, 1979-1987

2001 ◽  
Vol 38 (08) ◽  
pp. 38-4710-38-4710
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Policy Decision Making

Modeling Foreign Policy Decision Making

1970 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 136, 138
Author(s):  
RICHARD L. MERRITT
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Policy Decision Making

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.

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