Decision Making

Valerie M. Hudson

American foreign policy may be studied from a variety of perspectives. Historical narrative, institutional analysis, issue area examination, rational choice theory, study of ideational and legal evolution, gendered perspectives, and Realpolitik accounts are all valid and useful approaches to understanding not only American foreign policy but the foreign policy of any nation.

DECISION MAKING AND FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS

Decision-making approaches and theories fall within the subfield of foreign policy analysis, within the larger field of internation relations. Foreign policy analysis (known as FPA) is distinguished from other theoretical approaches in international relations by its insistence that the explanatory focal point must be the foreign policy decision makers themselves and not larger structural or systemic phenomena. Explanatory variables from all levels of analysis, from the most micro to the most macro, are of interest to the analyst to the extent that they affect the decisionmaking process. Thus, of all subfields in international relations, FPA is the most radically integrative theoretical enterprise. Investigations into the roles that personality variables, perception and construction of meaning, group dynamics, organizational process, bureaucratic politics, domestic politics, culture, and system structure play in foreign policy decision making are the core research agenda of FPA. But as Richard Snyder, one of the founders of FPA, and his colleagues Henry Bruck and Burton Sapin noted in 1954, these are only important as they have an impact on the only true agents in international affairs—human decision makers:

In a sense, then, in the age-old philosophy of social science debate concerning whether agents or structures are the primary determinants of behavior in the social world, FPA comes down squarely on the side of agents. FPA is the agent-centered theory of international relations. Foreign policy analysts argue that without an account of human agency in international relations theory, one cannot develop a satisfactory account of change over time in international affairs. Furthermore, given the immense destructive power inherent in internation relations, explanations that omit an examination of the role and efficacy of human agency in using and containing that power do less than they ought.

Here, then, is yet another difference between FPA approaches and other accepted approaches to understanding international relations. Not only does FPA give an account of agency, but it gives a specific, rather than a general, account of agency. In such approaches as game theory and rational choice explanations of foreign policy, the actor is conceptualized as a generic, rational, utility-maximizing decision maker. In contrast, theories of FPA unpack that generic "black-boxed" actor and discover that the idiosyncrasies of the actor do affect foreign policy choice. To use terms coined by Alexander George, FPA is more interested in "actor-specific" theory than "actor-general" theory.

In sum, then, FPA produces radically integrative, agent-oriented, and actor-specific theory. In these three ways, it remains a unique and easily distinguishable subfield of international relations.

A Word About the Explanandum What is it that foreign policy analysts seek to explain? To use a common phrase, what is the dependent variable in FPA?

Despite attempts to formulate "foreign policy" in terms of consistently operationalized variables, it must be admitted that what is to be explained may vary across research programs within FPA. Some programs focus on foreign policy as an output of decision making; others focus on the decision-making process in foreign policy. For example, the use of events data (discussed below) as one's dependent variable is an example of conceptualizing foreign policy as an output. In this tradition, foreign policy "events" gleaned from news media can be coded for some set of variables, such as the level of commitment implied by the event on the part of the acting nation. Standardized coding then allows for direct comparison of the outputs of various nation-state actors, as well as permitting a longitudinal analysis of the foreign policy behavior of one nation.

It is also possible to take a more process-oriented approach to what is meant by foreign policy. For example, one could use the policy positions of various actors as the dependent variable, tracing how a particular position becomes dominant within a decision-making group over time. One could walk the cat back yet another step and examine how such policy stances crystallize in the first place from basic cognitive processes such as perception, problem representation, and construction of meaning. Another step back would be to ask how the decision-making group comes to be in the first place, how structures and processes of groups are created and changed over time within a society. Role conceptions concerning the nation-state, and concerning various institutions and groups within the nation-state, could also be the focus of inquiry.

Both approaches to the explanandum in FPA have been fruitfully used, and insights from each type of research informs the other. It is true that choice of explanandum affects choice of methodology: aggregate statistical testing may be useful in events data studies, whereas process-tracing and interpretivist analysis might be more helpful with process-oriented conceptualizations of foreign policy.

SURVEY OF FPA THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Individual Psychology and Cognition Characteristics of the individual decision maker may be very important in understanding the decisions ultimately made. Harold and Margaret Sprout, in their pioneering work Man-Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of International Politics (1956), believe that analysis of this "psychomilieu" is crucial to understanding nation-state foreign policy. Margaret G. Hermann argues that certain conditions increase the probability that the personal characteristics of leaders will affect foreign policy: when the decision maker has wide decision latitude within the governmental system, when the situation is nonroutine, ambiguous, or carries with it very high stakes, or when the policy under discussion is a long-term policy or strategy. In addition to these situational variables, the personality of a leader may also be more influential, according to Hermann, when the leader does not have formal diplomatic training or when the leader is not especially attentive or sensitive to changes in external circumstances.

Furthermore, the analyst must remain aware of the limitations and vulnerabilities of human beings, both in a physical sense and a cognitive sense. Physically, human decision making can be affected by stress levels, lack of sleep, acute or chronic illness, mental pathologies, medications being used, age, and so forth. For example, psychologists have found that decision making tends to be of higher quality when moderate levels of stress are present. Too low a stress level or too high a stress level can be counterproductive. But there are also cognitive limitations inherent in being human. The human brain is so complex that human beings often rely on reasoning shortcuts or heuristics to make decisions. Errors of representation, the "gambler's fallacy" (where the gambler believes that an outcome is more likely to occur if it has not occurred lately), and many other biases may affect choice. Furthermore, a person's ability to handle complexity has an upper limit: psychologists tell us that even the most conceptually complex human reasoner can only hold seven things in mind simultaneously. Robert Jervis explores these factors in depth in Perception and Misperception in International Politics (1976).

Humans are also a diverse lot in terms of their personal belief systems. At birth, each human begins to develop beliefs about how the world works and what is to be valued. In FPA, several scholars have created theoretical frameworks to typologize such belief systems. Margaret Hermann created a set of "foreign policy orientations" based on elements such as nationalism, belief in ability to control events, distrust of others, and task-affect orientation, among others. Alexander George promulgated the tool of "operational code analysis," wherein the analyst determines a leader's beliefs with reference to how best to accomplish goals. David Winter has sought to typologize the motivating forces for individual leaders. Such frameworks of analysis often rely on the methodology of content analysis, where a leader's speeches and writings are analyzed thematically or quantitatively to provide insight into the specifics of his or her belief system. Learning and change in knowledge systems has been a focus of inquiry for Jack Levy, and Matthew Bonham's methodology of cognitive mapping of content-analyzed material can be used to trace changes in knowledge structures over time.

Small-Group Dynamics and Problem Representation It is arguably within the context of small-group deliberations that most foreign policy decisions are made. Thus, the study of group decision making becomes a very important element of FPA. As noted, FPA owes a great debt to Richard Snyder and his colleagues Henry Bruck and Burton Sapin for insisting that researchers look below the nation-state level of analysis to the actual decision-making groups involved.

With regard to small groups in particular, as opposed to larger collectivities such as organizations and bureaucracies, the seminal work is undoubtedly Irving Janis's classic Groupthink (1972). Using examples taken from the annals of American foreign policy, such as the Bay of Pigs invasion, Janis was able to show how the desire to maintain group consensus and subjective feelings of personal acceptance by the group can cause deterioration of decision-making quality. Such groups wind up being "soft-headed" but "hardhearted" as outgroups are dehumanized and ingroup decision processes become sloppier. A hallmark of groupthink is the risky shift, where the group is prepared to make riskier decisions than any individual member of the group would be prepared to make on his own. A sense of group invulnerability and omniscience creates psychological disincentives to rethinking the group's initially preferred policy or even to constructing contingency plans in the event of failure of that policy. A later generation of scholars advanced Janis's work and explored the scope conditions under which groupthink is more or less likely.

The study of how a group comes to an initial representation of the problem at hand, and how, then, the group members aggregate their differing preferences, is another research agenda at this level of analysis. One way of analyzing group problem representation is to view group discussions as the attempt to jointly author a "story" that makes the problem intelligible. Donald A. Sylvan and Deborah Haddad, in the volume Problem Representation in Foreign Policy Decision Making (1998), suggest that such coauthorship allows for the action decision to be made collectively. When rival story lines are offered and collide, the group as a whole must work its way back to a consistent story line through persuasion and analysis. Yuen Foon Khong's important book Analogies at War (1992) demonstrates how the use of the conflicting analogies to frame the problem of Vietnam led to conceptual difficulties in reasoning about policy options. The "Korea" analogy gained ascendance, according to Khong, without sufficient attention paid to the incongruities between the two sets of circumstances. Thus, the debate over metaphors and analogies used to understand a new situation may predispose a group's policy response, possibly with tragic consequences.

How the structure and the process of a group affect decision outcomes, making some outcomes more or less likely, is also an interesting question. The role played by the members—as representatives of a larger group, or as autonomous actors— coupled with the size of the group and the leadership style used, may make deadlock more probable than agreement. These structural variables may in turn be influenced by rules for resolving conflict within the group, such as majority voting, two-thirds voting, or unanimity. Theory on coalition-building and bargaining may be invaluable in understanding how a particular decision is ultimately selected. Furthermore, certain types of leaders prefer certain types of group structures and processes. Theoretical leverage on the most likely outcome for various types of groups may be gained by these types of analysis.

Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics Although actual foreign policy decisions may be made primarily in small groups, the policy positions of group members and the subsequent implementation of decisions made by small groups are only well understood when the analyst includes insights at the organizational and bureaucratic levels of analysis. American foreign policy is dominated by several large organizations, such as the Defense Department and the State Department, and the resulting web of organizations—the bureaucracy—may have a political dynamic all its own. Indeed, to see this bureaucracy as merely the executive arm of foreign policy is to underestimate the powerful political forces that drive organizations. These powerful motivations—the desire for expanded "turf," expanded budget, expanded influence vis-à-vis other organizations, as well as the desire to maintain organizational "essence," "morale," and "culture"—may result in a radical undermining of the supposedly rational decision-making process in foreign policy. Morton Halperin's Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (1974) gives unforgettable examples of this unhappy dynamic with reference to the era of the Vietnam War.

Graham Allison's 1971 Essence of Decision (and its 1999 update) examines not only the subversion of rationality at the decision-making stage but also the subversion of rationality at the implementation end. Large organizations typically develop standard operating procedures (SOPs) that allow for quicker, more efficient responses than would otherwise be possible with collectivities numbering in the thousands or even millions of persons. Unfortunately, these SOPs are fairly insensitive to the nuances of external circumstances as well as to efforts by national leaders to adapt or modify them. Indeed, national leaders may not even comprehend that when they give an executive order it is first translated into a series of sequential SOP steps. This translation may leave much to be desired in terms of flexibility, creativity, and appropriateness. For example, Allison found that the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces, given the order in 1962 to construct ballistic missile sites in Cuba, used the same SOP they had developed for doing so in the Soviet Union. This SOP did not include a provision for camouflaging the construction sites. Thus, American U-2s were able to photograph the sites, and American analysts were immediately able to identify what they were, giving President John F. Kennedy and his advisers a crucial window of time in which to compel the Soviets to abandon their intentions.

Domestic Politics Surely there is no better case than that of American foreign policy with which to demonstrate the influence of domestic political considerations on policymaking. The chief executive must stand for election every four years and as a result may be constrained in his ability to act as he otherwise would absent such electoral considerations. The Congress and the judiciary also have unique roles to play in American foreign policy, and players there may also be facing political imperatives. The two-party system of American politics also plays havoc with the rationality of decision making, as actors must not only think of their own well-being but the relative standing of their party vis-à-vis the other. Furthermore, the variety of vocal special interest and lobbying groups, not only national but also transnational in nature, is positively dizzying.

Robert Putnam suggests that we understand foreign policy as a "two-level game" being played by the leadership of the nation. At one level, the leadership is trying to retain its domestic political standing and enhance its electoral prospects and the electoral prospects of its allies. At another level, the leadership is trying to negotiate with foreign powers to achieve foreign policy objectives. A bad move at either level can imperil one's prospects at the other level. The astute leader attempts to create opportunities whereby moves at one level directly translate into advantage at the other. Interestingly, one counterintuitive finding is that the more constrained the leader can claim to be in the domestic arena, the more insistent he can be in the foreign arena. Thus, the threat that the U.S. Congress would never ratify a particular treaty can be used by administration officials to successfully maneuver other foreign actors to move closer to their own preferred bargaining position.

Of course, the reverse is also a recognizable phenomenon in international relations. Sometimes international situations or policies are used by the government to deflect domestic criticism and bolster support among its citizenry. The oftnoted "rally 'round the flag" effect, wherein an international crisis involving confrontation with a hostile power increases the approval rating of a president, is one that sometimes is purposefully used by an embattled regime. Both Argentina and Great Britain arguably used the Falklands controversy of 1982 for this purpose.

Joe D. Hagan has attempted to create a cross-national database of the fragmentation and vulnerability of political regimes, with special reference to executive and legislative structures. His data set includes ninety-four regimes for thirty-eight nations over a ten-year period. He was able to assess whether foreign policy behavior, such as level of commitment in policy, is affected by political opposition. He discovered, among many other findings, that military or party opposition to the regime does indeed constrain possible foreign policy action.

In addition to more formal political group influence, there has been a robust research agenda tracing the relationship between U.S. public opinion and U.S. foreign policy. After World War II but before the Vietnam War era, it was an American truism that public opinion did not drive foreign policy, as "politics stopped at the water's edge." The Vietnam trauma undermined that consensus, and this was accelerated by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the global economy. Now Americans could see plainly that what happened in Thailand, for instance, might affect their pensions. International arrangements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization could be seen to have local effects. The responsiveness of the national leadership to public opinion can be seen most plainly in the swift retreat of U.S. forces in Somalia following the downing of two American helicopters in Mogadishu, with television footage of a paratrooper's body being dragged through the streets by an angry mob. Truly, as many have said, there is now a tangible "CNN effect" that must be taken into account when studying American foreign policy.

Culture and Ideational Social Construction Those FPA scholars who study the effects of culture and ideational social construction on foreign policy justifiably assert that what large collectivities believe to be true and believe to be good affects what those collectivities then do. The world is not only material—it is ideational—and often the ideational can be a more powerful force than the material.

One way to examine this issue is to investigate the effects of differences in culture on resultant foreign policy. Each national culture constructs a unique web of beliefs, meanings, values, and capabilities based on their idiosyncratic historical experiences. The "heroic history" of a nation is replete with lessons in what is precious and how one best protects those values. Such differences may aggravate internation hostilities, sometimes even unintentionally. For example, on the eve of serious negotiations, American negotiators are likely to state what they think an acceptable compromise would be and view their task as persuading the other party of the correctness of this view. Chinese negotiators, on the other hand, are likely to denounce their negotiating partner on the eve of serious negotiations, suggesting there can be no compromise at all. Unless each party understands the cultural proclivities of the other, fundamental misunderstanding and heightened hostilities may result.

Value differences may lead to misunderstanding as well. For example, Americans proudly proclaim that they would never negotiate with terrorists or give in to their demands. The Japanese, on the other hand, see no shame at all in negotiating with terrorists. When faced with a threat by another nation, the American response is to isolate and threaten that nation. However, in a 1999 study, Valerie A. Hudson found the Russian response was to befriend and trade with that nation so that the threat might be erased in a peaceful manner.

How do these differences in culture arise in the first place? They arise through a shared national experience that is interpreted by human agents who then undertake the task of persuading their compatriots that this interpretation is a good and appropriate one. Scholarly work has been done on each of these elements.

Helen Purkitt has used the methodology of "think-aloud protocol" to study how it is that an individual comes to an interpretation of a situation. Experimental subjects, including policymakers, were asked by Purkitt to verbalize their thought processes as they deliberated on policy issues. Purkitt thus was able to "see" which aspects of a situation were salient for which persons, how they synthesized uncertainty with analogy in their interpretations, and how soon it took for a particular interpretation to become accepted and treated as a natural interpretation for a situation. G. R. Boynton used textual exegesis of congressional hearings to investigate crystallization of understanding among committee members, finding that members would attempt to narrate a version of the events under question to each other and build a coherent narrative of the whole through smaller pieces upon which all could agree. Only when testimony had been translated into recognizable elements from this jointly constructed narrative were committee members able to fully understand the events.

In addition to the construction of meaning for individuals and small groups of decision makers, meanings may be constructed and shared among larger groups as well. National identity is continually evolving. Although the roots of national identity may lie in the history of the nation, it is current interpretation of that identity that may be more useful to the analyst. One important theoretical framework in this area of inquiry is the national-role-conception approach first developed by Kal Holsti in 1970. He argues that any social system, including a social system made up of nation-states, creates a set of differentiable roles that include both privileges and responsibilities. A variety of factors, including domestic conditions, distribution of power within the system of states, history, legal precedent, and others, help determine which nations gravitate toward which roles. A nation-state then develops a distinctive national role conception, which renders that nation-state's behavior more intelligible and predictable to the analyst. So, for example, though the United States may see itself in the role of a "bloc leader" (leader of the Western bloc), France views itself as a "regional leader" in Europe. Such self-conceptions may clash, as they often do in the case of France and the United States. National-role-conception analysis may uncover differences that might otherwise go unnoticed; for example Marijke Breuning points out that although Americans might lump Belgium and the Netherlands together as nations with very similar attributes, the Dutch tend to see themselves playing a proactive role in encouraging development in less developed countries due to their heroic history of involvement in exploration and colonization. Belgium, on the other hand, a creation of the major European powers, never took such an initiative and became a particularly indifferent former colonial power.

National identity or national role conceptions do change over time. Tracking that change involves detailed analysis of speeches and texts by those who help form opinion within society. Ideas are very useful to policy entrepreneurs, and identifying who is pushing what idea for what reason may help the analyst keep his or her finger on the course of identity evolution within a nation-state. Often ideas must be couched in the language of historical national identity to find favor with larger national audiences. For example, Hellmut Lotz noted in 1997 that on the eve of the Al Gore–Ross Perot debate over NAFTA, a sizable percentage of Americans were undecided over whether the agreement to include Mexico in a free trade agreement with the United States and Canada was a good thing or not. During the course of the televised debate, both men made reference to key themes of American national identity: the American Dream, American exceptionalism, American strength, American vulnerability, American isolationism, and so forth. Lotz found that the audience of undecideds resonated overwhelmingly with the Gore portrayal of America as strong and fearless rather than with the Perot portrayal of America as weak and needing to protect itself from foreigners. Thus, despite the fact that both men were speaking in the context of shared meaning concerning America, Gore was the more successful policy entrepreneur, for he was able to sway voters to his position by means of his selective emphasis on strategically chosen aspects of American identity. In a similar vein, in a 1993 article Jeffrey Checkel was able to reconstruct the trail of policy-entrepreneur intervention in the development of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika policies. To trace the positions and the network contacts of persons holding particular ideas is a formidable task for the analyst, but one which is very rewarding if the focus is on possible change in, rather than continuity of, foreign policy direction.

STRUCTURAL AND SYSTEMIC FACTORS

Although foreign policy analysis places its focus on decision makers and decision making, government officials are not ignorant of salient features of the international system. Characteristics of the international system may constrain what policymakers feel they can do, but simultaneously may provide opportunities to advance their nation-states' purposes. Furthermore, nation-states can attempt to reflexively shape the system in such a way that their nation-state is more secure.

Two broad approaches to this topic may be differentiated. One approach is to examine the national attributes of nations, including a comparison of such attributes. Nation-state behavior and internation interaction may then be explained by reference to these attributes. Second, one could look at the system in a more abstract manner, by investigating non-unit-specific factors such as anarchy within a system, the existence of international regimes on particular issues, evolving conceptualizations of legitimate and illegitimate behavior within the system, and so forth.

Regarding the first, attribute-centered approach, one of the classic works of foreign policy analysis is the "pre-theory" framework of James Rosenau. In a seminal 1966 article, Rosenau suggests that the key to understanding a nation-state's behavior is to uncover its "genotype." That is, every nation has particular attributes that may make certain factors more determinant of its foreign policy than others. Using three dichotomous variables (size: small/large; wealth: developed/underdeveloped; accountability: open/closed), Rosenau posited eight genotypes: small/developed/open; large/underdeveloped/closed, and so on. Depending on the genotype of the nation under scrutiny, Rosenau then posits that certain factors would be more important for the analyst to investigate. So, for example, in a large/developed/open nation-state, Rosenau asserts that role variables (akin to national role conception) would be the most important factor, with systemic and idiosyncratic (for example, personal characteristics of leaders) being least important. On the other hand, in a small/underdeveloped/closed nation-state, idiosyncratic and systemic factors would be precisely those of greatest significance.

A more modern variant of this attributional approach is the theory of the democratic peace, which highlights the empirical fact that democracies virtually never go to war with one another. Although some have debated the definition of democracy (is Yugoslavia a democracy?), and others have suggested that democracy here is serving as a stand-in for a more fundamental factor such as cultural similarity, the behavior of nation-states is again being explained in terms of their attributes. Indeed, one might claim this approach can also subsume Marxist-Leninist explanations of war, which focus on the profit imperatives of imperialist states to explain the bellicosity of the European powers.

The second approach—more oriented to the structure of the system itself as opposed to the attributes of its members—is a well-established research tradition in international relations. Here, no matter what the attributes of states, the system itself may express properties that can be determinant of state behavior. So, for example, in the work of Kenneth Waltz, the primary factor affecting state behavior is the anarchy of the international system. In the absence of a world government, benign or tyrannical, able to enforce a code of behavior, states must help themselves, for they cannot trust other states in the system not to deflect from pledges of cooperation that they may have made. An emphasis on deterrence, a search for primacy and power, and a notable lack of cooperation even on important issues are all hallmarks of anarchy. Even states that actively desire to behave otherwise may be constrained by the straitjacket of system structure in this theory.

There may be other elements of the system that fine-tune the effects of anarchy. For example, the existence or nonexistence of intergovernmental organizations, the strength of international legal precedent, the number of poles of power in the system (bipolar, tripolar, multipolar), the degree of globalization of interaction (including trade and communication), patterns of internation dependency, relevant technology (such as the development of weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missiles to hurl them half a world away), may all play a role in modifying the effects of anarchy. Some theorists assert that anarchy can be overcome among states dealing with particular issues, and real sacrifice and cooperation can then be expressed by the nation-state. Agreements on ozone depletion, destruction of chemical and biological weapons, renunciation of land mines, and so forth can be seen as examples of this interpretation.

Other scholars would go even farther and claim that nation-states can proactively shape and mold the international system. As one such theorist, Alexander Wendt, put it in 1992, "anarchy is what states make of it." Drawing upon the more ideational literature mentioned, Wendt and others believe that shared meanings develop between governments in the system and that such shared meanings can transform what happens in the world system. For example, norms against genocide, assassination, rape in war, torture, slavery, use of land mines, and so forth have arisen within the international system and are becoming a robust basis for international action. Before the 1990s it would have been inconceivable for the former president of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, to have been held for an extradition hearing in Britain on the order of a Spanish judge. Yet by the turn of the twenty-first century Americans were wondering whether their own leaders might be tried for war crimes in a new international criminal court. These evolving norms did not arise from material conditions but from the formation of an ideational consensus or near-consensus.

In sum, then, the international systemic context of decision making must be factored into the theories of leader personality, small group dynamics, and bureaucratic and domestic politics that we have already examined.

Events Data No discussion of foreign policy analysis or decision-making theories would be complete without at least a cursory mention of events data. In most of the theories pitched at the subnational level of analysis mentioned, data indicative of the process of decision making hold center stage. Thus, content analysis of speeches and texts, analysis of tapes or records of group discussions, simulations and experiments, and process-tracing and other methodologies that lay bare the actual mechanics of decisions and their antecedents and consequences typically predominate the empirics of these theoretical efforts. We have previously mentioned that one could also focus on the outcomes of decision-making processes. The events data movement was designed to do just that.

Conceived when the social sciences were enamored of aggregate statistical testing of generalized hypotheses, the foreign policy "event" was to be the intellectual counterpart of the "vote" in the study of American politics. Votes could be tabulated, and a variety of statistical tests could be performed, to determine whether voting correlated with possible explanatory factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and so forth. The foreign policy event was to have the same utility for international relations.

One could imagine tabulating every action every nation took every day, whether those actions be of a more diplomatic or rhetorical nature or something more concrete, such as the use of military force. A number of variables would naturally be coded, such as the identity of the acting nation, the identity of the recipients of the action, the date, and some scaling or categorization of the action itself. These events would be gleaned from open source material, such as newspapers and wire services. Once thousands of events had been collected, aggregate statistical testing for robust correlations, longitudinal tracking of the evolving relationships between any given nations, patterns preceding the outbreak of violence in the system, and a host of other potentially interesting questions could then be addressed.

Even the U.S. government was sufficiently interested in the potential of this data collection effort to fund various projects to the tune of several million dollars in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of these event data sets continued to be updated into the twenty-first century, some by computer programs. The more famous events data sets include WEIS (World Event/Interaction Survey), COPDAB (Conflict and Peace Data Bank), CREON (Comparative Research on the Events of Nations), and KEDS (Kansas Events Data Set).

Events data began to lose its appeal to the wider subfield as it became understood that much of the richness and complexity of decision making was simply missing in an events data format. Thus foreign policy analysis largely returned to the study of process variables more conducive to a focus on decision making.

Integrative Efforts We have spoken of foreign policy analysis as a radically integrative intellectual exercise that requires the analyst to know quite a bit about phenomena at a variety of levels of analysis, from leader personality to system characteristics. All of this information must then be filtered through one's model of the decision makers and the decision-making process in order to gauge what policy choices are most likely in a given situation. This is a fairly tall order, and yet the foreign policy and national security establishment of the U.S. government must make these types of analyses every day.

It would be desirable for the foreign policy analysis scholarly community to offer some advice on how this is to be done in a theoretical sense. How does one actually accomplish such integration? What are the possible outputs of such an integrative exercise? Perhaps not surprisingly, FPA scholars struggle to provide such advice. When Rosenau wrote his "pre-theory" article in the 1960s, with its goal of tracing the influence of factors across several levels of analysis, the most he could offer was a ranking of the importance of each level of analysis based on the genotype of the nation under study. Frankly, FPA has not progressed much past Rosenau's offering; almost forty years later very little self-consciously integrative theoretical work existed in FPA. The CREON II project (1971–1993) developed a creative theoretical framework for integration. Three fundamental components comprised the model. In the first, called Situational Imperative, the details of the situation at hand, including the type of problem, the relationships between the nation-states involved in the problem, the power distribution across the involved nations, and other variables would provide a macro-level "cut" at what the probable foreign policy choice would be. A second component, called Societal Structure and Status, would offer information from the levels of domestic politics and culture. The third and central component was termed the Ultimate Decision Unit. Into this component, representing the actual decision makers in their decision-making setting, information from the first two components of the model would be introduced.

Three types of ultimate decision units were envisioned. Each type of unit came with its own set of most important decision-making variables. For example, in a predominant leader decision unit, variables relating to the head of state and his or her interaction with advisers and style of processing information about the situation at hand would be most important. In the second type of unit, the single group decision unit, theoretical literature about small-group structures and processes, groupthink, and coalition building become crucial. In the third type of unit, the multiple autonomous actor decision unit, literature about bargaining and conflict resolution would be most salient. In another innovative move, country experts would be asked to provide the majority of the inputs for the models. Several empirical cases analyzed by the decision units model were presented in a special issue of the journal Political Psychology in 2001.

The Question of Evaluation Before concluding this survey of foreign policy analysis literature, it must be noted that although the contemporary focus is on explanation of foreign policy, the subfield began with the aspiration that the insights of FPA could be used to evaluate and improve the quality of foreign policy decision making. Many early FPA scholars, such as Irving Janis and Morton Halperin, understood that the price of low-quality foreign policy decisions was death for innocent persons, both combatants and noncombatants. Indeed, in an era of nuclear weapons, the scale of such tragic deaths could be massive. If no other subfield of international relations attempts it, at least FPA should shoulder the responsibility of revealing the true and large extent to which human agency shapes international affairs. By such revelation, useful lessons and insights for the policymakers of today and tomorrow might be drawn.

Although much of scholarly FPA has turned from that task, at the turn of the twenty-first century there were still scholars dedicated to its fulfillment. Alexander George, in particular, through such works as Bridging the Gap (1993), has done much to keep this normative agenda alive. Works in this vein, such as Good Judgment in Foreign Policy (2001), edited by Stanley Renshon and Deborah Welch Larsen, continued to appear. It is hoped that a fuller engagement of agential questions will arise again within the subfield of FPA. From such an engagement, greater policy relevance will be achieved, which would be a positive step forward.

CONCLUSION

The decision-making approaches and theories associated with the subfield of foreign policy analysis are unique in international relations for their attention to the specific human agents behind every foreign policy choice. Rather than agent-general deductive systems, such as found in game theory, a more detailed and particularistic account of human agency is sought. In addition to this agential focus, a decision-making approach mandates that information from multiple levels of analysis be collected and synthesized in a parallel fashion as the actual decision makers collect and synthesize such information. FPA thus becomes a profoundly integrative theoretical enterprise as well.

This type of approach is noteworthy for its potential not only to integrate disparate variables from distinct levels of analysis but also to integrate currently disconnected domains of human knowledge and activity concerning international affairs. Two notable examples are the disconnect between international relations and comparative politics within the discipline of political science, and the disconnect between international relations and comparative politics as found in the academy on the one hand and the foreign policymaking establishment of the government on the other.

Decision-making approaches and foreign policy analysis can provide some needed connections here. By integrating variables at the supernational and national levels of analysis (the traditional purview of international relations) with variables at subnational levels of analysis (the traditional realm of comparative politics), FPA provides theoretical and empirical linkages that demonstrate how each subfield could usefully inform the other. By emphasizing the decision maker and the decision-making process, by exploring the agency inherent in foreign policy making, by pointing out useful lessons from the study of past foreign policy decision making's successes and failures, FPA has the potential to render the knowledge of the academy useful to real practitioners. Given the immense destructive power that can be unleashed at the international level, it is surely incumbent upon the academy to "bridge the gap" and offer its best insights as a contribution to the peace and safety of the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allison, Graham T. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Boston, 1971. One of the best works of foreign policy analysis.

Allison, Graham T., and Philip Zelikow. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York, 1999. An update of an important work using material declassified in the 1990s.

Bonham, G. Matthew, Victor M. Sergeev, and Pavel B. Parhin. "The Limited Test-Ban Agreement: Emergence of New Knowledge Structures in International Negotiations." International Studies Quarterly 41 (1997): 215–240.

Boynton, G. R. "The Expertise of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee." In Valerie M. Hudson, ed. Artificial Intelligence and International Politics. Boulder, Colo., 1991.

Breuning, Marijke. "Culture, History, and Role: Belgian and Dutch Axioms and Foreign Assistance Policy." In Valerie M. Hudson, ed. Culture and Foreign Policy. Boulder, Colo., 1997.

Callahan, Patrick, Linda Brady, and Margaret G. Hermann, eds. Describing Foreign Policy Behavior. Beverly Hills, Calif., 1982.

Checkel, Jeffrey T. "Ideas, Institutions, and the Gorbachev Foreign Policy Revolution." World Politics 45 (1993): 271–300.

East, Maurice A., Stephen A. Salmore, and Charles F. Hermann, eds. Why Nations Act: Theoretical Perspectives for Comparative Foreign Studies. Beverly Hills, Calif., 1978.

George, Alexander L. "The 'Operational Code': A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-making." International Studies Quarterly 13 (1969): 190–222. Another seminal article for those interested in cognitive approaches.

——. Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy. Washington, D.C., 1993. An impassioned call for the academy to inform foreign policy decision making.

Hagan, Joe D. "Regimes, Political Oppositions, and the Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy." In Charles F. Hermann, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and James N. Rosenau, eds. New Directions in the Study of Foreign Policy. Boston, 1986.

Halperin, Morton. Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy. Washington, DC, 1974. A classic on the subject.

Hermann, Charles F. "Decision Structure and Process." In Maurice East et al. Why Nations Act. Beverly Hills, Calif., 1978.

Hermann, Margaret G. "Personality and Foreign Policy Decision Making: A Study of 53 Heads of Government." In Donald A. Sylvan and Steve Chan, eds. Foreign Policy Decision Making: Perception, Cognition, and Artificial Intelligence. New York, 1984.

Holsti, Kal J. "National Role Conceptions in the Study of Foreign Policy." International Studies Quarterly 14 (1970): 233–309. The seminal article on national role conception that started a new research agenda that continues to this day.

Hudson, Valerie M. "Cultural Expectations of One's Own and Other Nations' Foreign Policy Action Templates." Political Psychology 20 (1999): 767–802.

Hudson, Valerie M., with Christopher A. Vore. "Foreign Policy Analysis Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow." Mershon International Studies Review 39 (1995): 209–238. A good and fairly comprehensive overview of the subfield of foreign policy analysis.

Janis, Irving. Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. 2d ed. Boston, 1982. A classic that is well known in social science circles.

Jervis, Robert. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton, N.J., 1976. Another classic work on perception.

Khong, Yuen Foong. Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965. Princeton, N.J., 1992.

Levy, Jack. "Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield." International Organization 48 (1994): 279–312.

Lotz, Hellmut. "Myth and NAFTA: The Use of Core Values in U.S. Politics." In Valerie M. Hudson, ed. Culture and Foreign Policy. Boulder, Colo., 1997.

"Political Psychology." Special issue on the Decision Units model of International Studies Review, 2002.

Purkitt, Helen E. "Problem Representations and Political Expertise: Evidence from 'Think Aloud' Protocols of South African Elite." In Donald A. Sylvan and James F. Voss, eds. Problem Representation in Foreign Policy Decision Making. Cambridge and New York, 1998.

Putnam, Robert. "Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games." International Organization 42 (1998): 427–486. A foundational article that should be read by those seeking to link foreign and domestic politics.

Renshon, Stanley A., and Deborah Welch Larsen, eds. Good Judgment in Foreign Policy. New York, 2001.

Rosenau, James N. "Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy." In R. Barry Farrell, ed. Approaches in Comparative and International Politics. Evanston, Ill., 1966.

Schrodt, Philip A. "Event Data in Foreign Policy Analysis." In Laura Neack, Jeanne Hey, and Patrick J. Haney, eds. Foreign Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in Its Second Generation. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1995.

Snyder, Richard C., H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin. Foreign Policy Decision-Making: An Approach to the Study of International Politics. Glencoe, Ill., 1962. Arguably the work that began the decision-making theoretical enterprise in foreign policy.

Sprout, Harold, and Margaret Sprout. Man-Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of International Politics. Princeton, N.J., 1956. Another classic, emphasizing the need to integrate models of human decision making with models of the context in which those decisions are being made.

Sylvan, Donald A., and James F. Voss, eds. Problem Representation in Foreign Policy Decision Making. Cambridge and New York, 1998.

'T Hart, Paul, Eric K. Stern, and Bengt Sundelius, eds. Beyond Groupthink: Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policy-Making. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1997.

Waltz, Kenneth N. Theory of International Politics. Reading, Mass., 1979. A classic of more mainstream international relations.

Wendt, Alexander. "Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics." International Organization 46 (1992): 391–425. A good introduction to the constructivist turn in international relations theory.

Winter, David G. The Power Motive. New York, 1973.

See also The Behavioral Approach to Diplomatic History; Public Opinion .

DECISION MAKING AND CUBA

It is interesting to note that several of the most important works in foreign policy analysis use the same case study involving U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba during the Kennedy administration. Specifically, the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 have received more attention by foreign policy analysts than any other cases. The two crises provide a neat set of intellectual bookends: How could the same president, surrounded by approximately the same advisers, mess up so royally in April 1961 and yet acquit himself so heroically and save the world from nuclear holocaust sixteen months later? Two of the most important works in the foreign policy analysis tradition, Graham Allison's Essence of Decision and Irving Janis's Groupthink, use these cases to demonstrate the crucial role of decision making in international affairs.

Although one might think that such scholarly attention would eventually wane as the crises recede historically, events have sparked renewed interest. For example, the release in 1997 of tapes made by Kennedy during ExCom (Executive Committee) deliberations prompted a whole new wave of theoretical analysis of the Cuban missile crisis. In the spring of 2001, the main participants in the Bay of Pigs, including Fidel Castro, rebel commanders, and Central Intelligence Agency handlers, convened for a first-ever conference in Havana, and information heretofore secret, such as transcripts of Castro's radio communications from the field, were made public at that time.

One of the best ways to view the immense reconceptualization of these cases that all of this new information has brought about is to read Graham Allison's original Essence of Decision (1971) side by side with the latest version of the book by Allison and Philip Zelikow (1999). An important lesson to be gleaned is that our understanding of decision making rests in large part upon our understanding of the empirical historical realities of decision making. When you change the latter, you inevitably change the former.