Test Flashcards
Realists and other IR theorists often assume leaders do things in the state’s national security interests.
Yet, any study of historical events suggests differences across leaders’ behavior, even in the same state.
Proponents of decision-making models argue
instead that there is no deterministic link
between systemic structure and foreign policy
action.
The decision-making approach requires an
understanding of :
– How leaders perceive the external world
– How groups or other organizational actors influence
leaders’ choices inside the state.
Decision-Making: Individual Level
Rational model of decision-making
- Actors maximize utility/goals
-Considers costs of options and probability of
success in achieving goals
– Incomplete information
Models: Rational Model
Applies social psychology models to help understand
foreign policy decisions.
– How leader acquire information, their belief systems
– Early experiences: education, family, socialization,
etc.
– When individual beliefs vary, this can lead to different
outcomes in similar situations.
* “Who leads matters”: would WWII have happened
differently, if Hitler was not in powerr
Models: Psychological
Misperception as a cause of war
-Capabilities
-Intentions
A common approach is to examine wars and see if misperceptions preceded them
Models: Misperception
Operational codes
-Master beliefs about adversary images, crisis
dynamics, and optimal bargaining strategies
-Cognitive/motivated biases
Models: Belief/Images
Developed by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (BDM) in The War Trap (1981)
-Is war the product of blind passion or of reasoned
judgement?
Models: Expected Utility
- War decision-making is dominated by a single leader
-The initiation of war is intentional
-Leaders are rational expected utility maximizers
-Leaders have different risk attitudes or the
probability of success a leader demands before
pursuing a course of action
-Uncertainty about the behavior of other states
in the event of war affects decision-making
-Nations lose strength with distance
Expected Utility Assumptions
Rational: select the highest ranked alternative
Utility: how closely another nation’s policy preferences
reflect your own
Expected utility: the sum of utilities (payoffs) of possible
outcomes times their probabilities.
Expected Utility Definitions
Utility: measured using alliance configurations
Uncertainty: changes in alliance configurations
Expected Utility calculation
Nations initiate war only when the expected utility of war is positive
Hypothesis 1
The initiator had positive EU as predicted in 84%
of the cases (65/76).
Pattern holds in 19th and 20th centuries.
Results H1
Initiators with positive expected utility are more
likely to win wars
Hypothesis 2
When the initiator had positive EU, it won 83% of the time (148/179) vs. 57% in cases where EU<0 (31/54)
Result H2
Two Phases
-Editing Phase
- Acceptance: Decision maker is most likely to accept the framing of options as they are originally presented as the most appropriate formulation of the choice problem – decision makers are not likely to add, delete, or alter the form and order of options
-Segregation: decision makers focus on the factors that seem most relevant to the immediate problem when making choices – ignore indirectly related information
-Evaluation phase
-Value function (utility)
-Weighting function (probability)
Models: Prospect Theory
Bueno de Mesquita expanded this model to incorporate expert opinions & calculate what multiple actors are likely to do in a crisis situation.
Expansion to Multi-actor Crises
