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Diplomacy in East Asia
Jan Polišenský, MSc., Ph.D.
Spring 2019
Diplomacy and Foreign policy
making & leadership in East Asia
Jan Polišenský, MSc., Ph.D.
Spring 2019
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Foreign Policy
• Foreign Policy
– The strategy or approach chosen by the national governments to
achieve its goals in its relations with external entities.
• This includes decisions to do nothing.
– Foreign policy is designed to protect and promote the national interest
abroad
Domestic policy
• Domestic policy
– is designed to protect and promote the national interest within the
country
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Level of Analysis
Level of Analysis Foreign Policy Focus
Individual Options/Decisions
State Behaviors
System Outcomes
Level of Analysis
• The individual level of analysis focuses on leaders and decision makers in
an effort to explain foreign policy.
– It assumes that individuals shape the course of history, because it is their
choices and decisions that drive the course of events.
– The analysis of individuals might focus on either their personalities or on
their perceptions—how they make sense of their world and the events
occurring within it.
– The first focus leads to the study of personality traits, beliefs, and values
as the factors that explain foreign policy decisions.
– It emphasizes the enduring qualities of an individual decision maker. Insight
into the personality, character, beliefs, and values of the individual enhances
our ability to gauge what motivates that decision maker.
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Level of Analysis
• The individual level of analysis focuses on leaders and decision makers in an
effort to explain foreign policy.
– individual’s perceptions, or the process by which a person makes sense of events
and situations in her or his world, are specific to that situation or event.
– individuals often do not make decisions alone but instead work together with
others in a group or in a bureaucratic setting.
– In such instances, their individual personalities and perceptions interact as they
jointly determine how best to define the problem before them.
– Group interactions are often classified at the individual level of analysis because
the focus tends to be on understanding the dynamics of interpersonal interaction
rather than on the group as an undifferentiated unit.
– Group decision making, as well as other aspects of the advisory system and
bureaucracy, is the subject of chapter
Level of Analysis
• The state level of analysis focuses on factors internal to the state as
those that compel states to engage in specific foreign policy behaviors.
– Such analyses include the institutional framework of the state (such as
the relationships between the executive and legislative branches of
government, the organization of the government bureaucracy, or
whether the state is a democracy), domestic constituencies (such as
interest groups, ethnic groups, or public opinion more generally),
economic conditions, and also the state’s national history and culture.
– At this level of analysis, the emphasis is on how factors internal to the
state influence the behavior of that state on the global stage
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Level of Analysis
• The system level of analysis focuses on comparisons (and interactions)
between states.
– This level of analysis asks questions about the relative power of states
– The international system is defined as a set of states whose interactions are
guided by their relative capabilities, such as their power and wealth, which
influence their possibilities for action and for success on the global stage.
– These relative attributes may change across time as a country’s economy yields
more wealth or as it attains technological or military capacities.
– The reverse may also be true: countries can lose as well as gain power.
– Changes in relative capabilities of states may create opportunities, but they
may also serve to increase the constraints on states.
– An increase in military capacities may embolden a state, while an increasingly
interdependent world economy presents constraints.
National Interest
• Political Interests or sometimes known as National Interests
• Promote a nation’s
– Security
– Stability
– Prosperity
• In the domains of
– Domestic
– Regional
– Global
• Identify threats to those interests, formulate policy
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Rationality
• We have to consider two important concepts in rationality and good foreign
policy decisions.
• When seeking to explain foreign policy decisions, it is more fruitful to start
with the assumption that the leaders who made these puzzling decisions were
rational human beings trying their best to make “good” foreign policy
decisions for their countries.
• Once we make that assumption, however, we must also begin to ponder what
motivates these leaders, what they understand about the situations they face,
and what factors made their decisions turn out to be “bad” ones.
• Commonsense notions of rationality demand that each of these leaders
should have known better.
• Yet if we stop to think about the world from the perspective of each leader,
knowing what that leader knew at the time of the decision, it becomes a little
more difficult to maintain this attitude.
Rationality
• Rationality
– the demand that the means—or the policy choices—are logically connected to the
ends—or the leader’s goals.
– In other words, rationality demands only that a decision maker have some purpose
in mind and make choices designed to achieve those predetermined ends.
• To argue that a decision maker is rational, does not mean that you agree with
his or her goals—or that you, even if you had the same goals, could not make
different choices.
• You may find the goals objectionable. Or you may share the goals and yet be
convinced that different policies would better achieve those objectives.
• Rationality does not guarantee a desirable outcome, because the
outcome is in part dependent on the reactions of other actors
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Rationality
• The main requirement of rationality: the demand that the means—or the
policy choices—are logically connected to the ends—or the leader’s goals. In
other words, rationality demands only that a decision maker have some
purpose in mind and make choices designed to achieve those predetermined
ends.
• To argue that a decision maker is rational, therefore, does not mean that you
agree with his or her goals—or that you, even if you had the same goals,
could not make different choices.
• You may find the goals objectionable. r you may share the goals and yet be
convinced that different policies
• would better achieve those objectives. Additionally, and even more important,
rationality does not guarantee a desirable outcome, because the outcome is in
part dependent on the reactions of other actors.
Good Decisions
• Good Decisions
– Foreign policy decisions are judged to be good or bad in
hindsight.
– Such evaluations are frequently based on the knowledge that the
decision led to a desirable or disastrous outcome
– Just as good decisions do not guarantee a good outcome, flawed
decisions do not inevitably lead to bad results.
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Good Decisions
• All too often, foreign policy decisions are judged to be good or bad in
hindsight.
• Such evaluations are frequently based on the knowledge that the
decision led to a desirable or disastrous outcome.
• They “should have known better.”
– But is hindsight a fair standard? The answer is no.
• Just as good decisions do not guarantee a good outcome, flawed
decisions do not inevitably lead to bad results.
Foreign Policy Analysis
• Foreign Policy Analysis
– The subfield of international relations that seeks to explain foreign policy or
alternatively foreign policy behavior, with reference to the theoretical ground
of human decision makers, acting singly and in groups. The subfield has several
hallmarks:
• A commitment to look bellow the nation-state level of analysis to actor-specific
information
• A commitment to build actor-specific theory as the interface between actorgeneral
theory and the complexity of the real world
• A commitment to pursue multiclausal explanations spanning multiple levels of
analysis
• A commitment to utilize theory and findings from across the spectrum of social
science
• A commitment to viewing the process of foreign policy decision-making as
important as the output thereof.
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Foreign Policy Behaviour
• Foreign Policy Behaviour
– The observable artefacts of foreign policy, specific actions and words
used to influence others in the realm of foreign policy; may include
the categorization of such behavior; such as along conflictcooperation
continua, which categorizations could be used to
construct data, including event data.
– FPB may include behavior that was accidental on unintended by the
government, and in addition, decisions to do nothing may not leave
any behavioral artefact
Foreign Policy Behaviour
• Foreign Policy Behaviour
– is the acting out the decision.
– it consists of the actions taken to influence the behavior of an
external actor or to secure a benefit for the country itself.
– Especially the policy makers of smaller countries often focus more on
securing tangible benefits for their own state (such as military
assistance or development aid) than on obtaining political influence
globally (by, e.g., promoting free trade or democracy).
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Foreign Policy Behaviour
• Foreign Policy Behaviour
– is the acting out the decision.
– it consists of the actions taken to influence the behavior of
an external actor or to secure a benefit for the country itself.
– Especially the policy makers of smaller countries often focus
more on securing tangible benefits for their own state (such
as military assistance or development aid) than on obtaining
political influence globally (by, e.g., promoting free trade or
democracy).
Foreign Policy Outcomes
• Outcomes
– Decision makers almost always have options.
– Very powerful states often do not use all the resources at their
disposal, and therefore, knowing what a state is capable of is
only one ingredient in predicting the outcome of a conflict.
– Hence, outcomes require that we understand the foreign
policy decisions and behaviors of not just one country but of
two or more countries in interaction.
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Contemporary relevance of Foreign Policy
• For many IR scholars, the process of globalization and
interdependence had gained pace in 1990’s undermined the state as an
actor, thereby making a focus on the foreign policy of state less central
to explanation of international relations than during WWII
• Other scholars argue
– Globalization and interdependence did not lead to the demise of the
state, instead they made it both more constrained and more central
• Increasing number of restrictions on the freedom of the state to act
as they wish
– Globalization created web of interdependence that undermined the
state’s ability to control its own fate
The Origins of FPA: Three Paradigmatic Works
• FPA-style work within the field of international relations per se is dated back to
the late 1950s and early 1960s.
• Three paradigmatic works arguably built the foundation of foreign policy analysis:
– Decision Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics by
Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin (1954: also see Snyder et al., 1962; reprinted in 2002).
– ‘‘Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy’’ by Rosenau (a book chapter
written in 1964 and published in Farrell, 1966).
– Man–Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of International
Politics by Sprout and Sprout (1956: expanded and revised in article form in 1957
and their 1965 book, The Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs with Special
Reference to International Politics).
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Classic FPA Scholarship
• The first period of FPA scholarship was marked by path-breaking work in
conceptualization, development of actor-specific theory at various levels of
analysis, and methodological experimentation
• Group Decision Making
– Snyder et al. had emphasized the process and structure of groups
making foreign policy decisions.
– Numerous scholars echoed this theme in their work, which ranged
from the study of foreign policy-making in very small groups to the
study of foreign policy-making in very large organizations and
bureaucracies.
Classic FPA Scholarship
• Small Group Dynamics
– Some of the most theoretically long-lived work produced during this period centered
on the consequences of making foreign policy decisions in small groups.
– Social psychologists had explored the unique dynamics of such a decision setting
before, but never in relation to foreign policy decision making, where the stakes might
be much higher.
– The most important work is that of Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink almost
singlehandedly began this research tradition. In that volume, and using studies drawn
specifically from the realm of foreign policy, Janis shows convincingly that the
motivation to maintain group consensus and personal acceptance by the group can
cause deterioration of decision-making quality
– Groupthink becomes one outcome of several possible in the work of Hermann
(1978).
– Hermann categorizes groups along several dimensions (size, role of leader, rules for
decision, autonomy of group participants), and is able to make general predictions
about the likely outcome of deliberations in each type of group.
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Classic FPA Scholarship
• Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics
– This first period also witnessed the emergence of a strong research agenda that
examined the influence of organizational process and bureaucratic politics on
foreign policy decision making. The foundations of this approach can be
traced back to Weber’s The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations
– First period research showed how ‘‘rational’’ foreign policymaking can be
upended by the attempt to work with and through large organized
governmental groups.
– Organizations and bureaucracies put their own survival at the top of their list
of priorities, and this survival is measured by relative influence vis a` vis other
organizations (‘‘turf ’’), by the organization’s budget, and by the morale of its
personnel.
– The organization will jealously guard and seek to increase its turf and
strength, as well as to preserve undiluted what it feels to be its ‘‘essence’’ or
‘‘mission.’’
Classic FPA Scholarship
• Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics
– Large organizations also develop standard operating procedures (SOPs),
which, while allowing them to react reflexively despite their inherent
unwieldiness, permit little flexibility or creativity.
• These SOPs may be the undoing of more innovative solutions of decision
makers operating at levels higher than the organization, but there is little
alternative to the implementation of policy by bureaucracy.
• The interface between objectives and implementation is directly met at this
point, and there may be substantial slippage between the two, due to the
incompatibility of the players’ perspectives.
• Although the articulation of this research agenda can be found in works such
as Huntington (1960), and Snyder (1962), probably the most cited works are
Allison (1971) and Halperin
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Classic FPA Scholarship
• Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics
– Allison In his famous Essence of Decision, Graham offers three cuts at explaining one episode in foreign
policy the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
• Investigating both the U.S. and the Soviet sides of this case. Allison shows that the unitary rational
actor model of foreign policymaking does not suffice to explain the curiosities of the crisis.
• Offering two additional models as successive ‘‘cuts’’ at explanation, the Organizational Process
Model and the Bureaucratic Politics Model (the first, intraorganizational factors; the second,
interorganizational factors), allows Allison to explain more fully what transpired.
• His use of three levels of analysis also points to the desire to integrate rather than segregate
explanations at different levels.
• Halperin’s (1974) book Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy is an extremely detailed amalgam of
generalizations about bureaucratic behavior, accompanied by unforgettable examples from
American defense policymaking of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson years.
• It should be noted that bureaucratic politics research gained impetus from the Vietnam War
ongoing during this period, because the war was seen by the public as defense policy run amok due,
in part, to bureaucratic imperatives (see, e.g., Krasner, 1971).
• Work in the late 1980s in this tradition was continued by Hilsman (1987), Kozak and Keagle (1988),
Wiarda (1990), Posen (1984), and Korany (1986).
Comparative Foreign Policy (CFP)
• Comparative Foreign Policy (CFP)
– James Rosenau’s cross-national and multilevel theory of foreign policy created
the subfield known as comparative foreign policy (CFP).
– It is in CFP that we see most directly the legacy of scientism/behavioralism in
FPA’s genealogy.
– Foreign policy could not be studied in aggregate: foreign policy behavior
could.
– CFPers proposed the foreign policy ‘‘event:’’
– the tangible artifact of the influence attempt that is foreign policy,
alternatively viewed as ‘‘who does what to whom, how’’ in international
affairs.
– Events could be compared along behavioral dimensions, such as whether
positive or negative affect was being displayed, or what instruments of
statecraft (e.g., diplomatic, military, economics, and so on) were used in the
influence attempt, or what level of commitment of resources was evident.
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Comparative Foreign Policy (CFP)
• Comparative Foreign Policy (CFP)
– Behavior as disparate as a war, a treaty, and a state visit could now be
compared and aggregated in a theoretically meaningful fashion.
– This conceptualization of the dependent variable was essential to the
theorybuilding enterprise in CFP.
– To uncover law-like generalizations, one would have to conduct empirical
testing across nations and across time: case studies were not an efficient
methodology from this standpoint.
– However, with the conceptual breakthrough of the ‘‘event,’’ it was now
possible to collect data on a variety of possible explanatory factors and
determine (by analyzing the variance in the events’ behavioral
dimensions) the patterns by which these independent variables were
correlated with foreign policy behavior (see McGowan and Shapiro,
1973).
Comparative Foreign Policy (CFP)
• Events Data
– The collection of ‘‘events data’’ was funded to a significant degree by the
U.S. government. Andriole and Hopple (1981) estimate that the
government (primarily DARPA and the NSF) provided over $5 million
for the development of events data sets during the time period 1967–
1981.
– Generally speaking, the collection effort went like this: students were
employed to comb through newspapers, chronologies, and other sources
for foreign policy events, which they would then code according to
(usually elaborate) coding rules listed in (usually ponderous) coding
manuals, have their coding periodically checked for intercoder reliability,
and finally punch their codings up on computer cards. The acronyms of
some of these events data projects live on: some because the data are still
being collected
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Comparative Foreign Policy (CFP)
• Integrated Explanations
– CFP research aims explicitly at integrated multilevel explanations.
– Independent variables at several levels of analysis were linked by
theoretical propositions (sometimes instantiated in statistical or
mathematical equations) to properties or types of foreign policy
behavior.
– At least three of the four attempted to confirm or disconfirm the
propositions by aggregate empirical testing.
The Psychological and Societal Milieux of Foreign Policy
Decision Making
• The mind of a foreign policy maker is not a tabula rasa:
– it contains complex and intricately related information and patterns, such
as
• Beliefs
• Attitudes
• Values
• Experiences
• Emotions
• Traits
• Style
• Memory
• National, and self-conceptions.
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The Psychological and Societal Milieux of Foreign Policy
Decision Making
– Each decision-maker’s mind is a microcosm of the variety possible in a given society.
• Culture
• History
• Geography
• Economics
• Political institutions
• Ideology
• Demographics
• and innumerable other factors shape the societal context in which the decision maker
operates.
– The Sprouts referred to these as the milieu of decision making
– Brecher’s (1972) work cited above belongs to this tradition as well.
• Brecher’s The Foreign Policy System of Israel explores that nations’s psychocultural
environment and its effects on Israel’s foreign policy. Unlike Brecher’s integrative
approach to the psychosocial milieu, most works in the Sprout paradigm either
examined the psychological aspects of foreign policy decision making or its broader
societal aspects.
The Psychological and Societal Milieux of Foreign
Policy Decision Making
• Individual Characteristics
– It is in the cognition and information processing of an actual human agent that
all the explanatory levels of FPA are in reality integrated.
– What sets FPA apart from more mainstream IR is this insistence that, as Hermann and
Kegley (1994:4) put it, ‘‘a compelling explanation [of foreign policy] cannot treat the
decider exogenously.’’
– Political psychology can assist us in understanding the decider.
– Under certain conditions high stress, high uncertainty, dominant position of the head
of state in FPDM the personal characteristics of the individual would become crucial
in understanding foreign policy choice.
– Another early effort at a systematic study of leader personality effects is the concept
of ‘‘operational code,’’ an idea originating with Leites (1951), and refined and extended
by one of the most important figures in this area of research
– Defining an operational code involves identifying the core political beliefs of the leader
about the inevitability of conflict in the world, the leader’s estimation of his or her own
power to change events, and so forth, as well as an exploration of the preferred means
and style of pursuing goals
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The Psychological and Societal Milieux of Foreign
Policy Decision Making
• Individual Characteristics
– The role of perceptions and images in foreign policy was a very
important research agenda in this first generation of FPA.
– The work of both Robert Jervis and Richard Cottam deserve
special mention here. Jervis’s (1976) Perception and
Misperception in International Politics
– Deterrence strategies can fail catastrophically if
misperception of the other’s intentions or motivations
occur
The Psychological and Societal Milieux of Foreign
Policy Decision Making
• National and Societal Characteristics
– Holsti’s (1970) elucidation of ‘‘national role conception’’ spans both
the psychological and the social milieu.
– With this concept, Holsti seeks to capture how a nation views itself
and its role in the international arena.
– Holsti turns to elite perceptions of national role, arguing that these
perceptions are arguably more salient to foreign policy choice.
– Perception of national role is also influenced by societal character,
a product of the nation’s socialization process.
– Differences here can lead to differences in national behavior as well
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The Psychological and Societal Milieux of Foreign
Policy Decision Making
• National and Societal Characteristics
– The study of culture as an independent variable affecting foreign policy was
just beginning to be redeveloped near the end of the 1980s, after petering out
in the 1960s.
– Culture might have an effect on cognition it might have ramifications for
structuration of institutions such as bureaucracies.
– Conflict resolution techniques might be different for different cultures, as well
– Indeed, the very processes of policymaking might be stamped by one’s
cultural heritage and socialization
– The study of the role of societal groups in foreign policymaking can be seen
as an outgrowth of the more advanced study of societal groups
The Psychological and Societal Milieux of Foreign
Policy Decision Making
• National and Societal Characteristics
– The study of the effect of national attributes (size, wealth, political
accountability, economic system, etc.) on foreign policy was certainly, in a
theoretical sense,
– but was carried out by scholars typically performing large-N studies.
– The propensity to be involved in war was usually the foreign policy
dependent variable of choice in this work
– Are large nations more likely to go to war than small nations?
– Are rich nations more likely to go to war than poor ones?
– Are authoritarian regimes more bellicose than democracies?
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Contemporary FPA Scholarship
• Two developments ushered in a new period of FPA scholarship after a time of relative
quiescence in the late 1980s.
• First, the end of the Cold War brought with it a renewed interest in actor-specific theory.
– A bipolar, quasi-zero-sum rivalry lends itself relatively well to abstract, actor-general analysis
focused primarily on the macro-constraints imposed by that system.
– Furthermore, actor-general theory was more practical for scholars to use during the Cold
War because the Soviet system was fairly opaque.
– However, the end of the Cold War revealed anew that it is not possible to explain or predict
system change at the level of system-level variables alone.
– Our intuitive understanding of this event involves variables more in harmony with FPA: the
personalities of Gorbachev, Havel, Walesa
– The struggles between various domestic players, such as the military, the Communist Party,
the bureaucrats, and so forth.
– The need for renewed progression in actor-specific theory development was made plain.
• Second, in the CFP school of FPA, which was completely transformed as a result.
– The term ‘‘comparative foreign policy’’ has largely disappeared from the subfield.
The lens of FPA
• How do international relations look when viewed through the lens of
FPA?
• First and formemost, the decision-making approach of FPA breaks apart the
monolithic view of nation-states as unitary actors.
• It focuses on the people and units that comprise the state.
• For example, "the United States"
– could mean certain individuals
• the president,
• secretary of state
• secretary of defense
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– a set of bureaucratic agencies
• the Department of State
• the Department of Defense
• the Central Intelligence Agency
– or certain formally constituted groups with a mandate involving international affairs
• the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• the National Security Council
• the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives
• Indeed, for any one problem, all these entities could be doing things at once-and their
actions may not logically fit together into a coherent "U.S. policy."
• Moreover, for scholars involved in FPA, "the national interest," a concept that lies at the
heart of the realist analysis of IR, is more productively viewed as the interests of various
players-not all of which may coincide, and not all of which are coherently related to
anything resembling an objective national interest
The lens of FPA
• FPA researchers also do not assume that decision makers will act in a
classically rational fashion.
• FPA builds on what the social sciences-psychology, economics,
sociology, anthropology, geography-are learning about human decision
making.
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In conclusion …..
• Foreign policy analysis is motivated by the desire to understand the interactions of
countries. It assumes that individual decision makers, alone or in groups, make foreign
policy decisions. It also assumes that foreign policies are usually determined by the complex
interplay of multiple factors.
• Foreign policy analysis can seek to explain different aspects of foreign policy. It may seek to
understand what options decision makers had and why they made the decisions they did; it
may seek to explain the foreign policy behavior of states; or why certain outcomes
occurred.
• Foreign policy decisions, behaviors, and outcomes are studied at different levels of analysis.
In this book, we use three levels of analysis: the individual, the state, and the system level of
analysis.
• Studying foreign policy comparatively provides greater insight into the conduct and
consequences of foreign policy than does study in single cases or drawing simple analogies.
• The objective of foreign policy analysis is to attain generalizable knowledge about foreign
policy decision making, behavior, and outcomes. Foreign policy analysts think in terms of
independent and dependent variables. They may compare large or small numbers of cases.
They sometimes use counterfactuals to evaluate independent (or causal) variables
Structure
• Foreign policy is at the boundary between the internal and the external
spheres of state
• According to Hill 2003
– that “double-sided” nature of foreign policy of being at the hinge of
domestic policy and international relations
– It has also added significantly to the difficulties of conceptualizing explaining
and assessing the role of actors and structures in foreign policy analysis.
• Complexity
– Foreign policy-making is a complex process of interaction between many
actors
– Their interaction is a dynamic process, leading to the constant evolution of
both actors and structures
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Responsible Actors
• Who are the actors of the foreign policy
• According to Hill:
– Obvious candidates (with a political mandates)
• Head of state
• Head of government
• Foreign ministers (secretary of state)
• Inner executives
• Security council
• Cabinets
• Politburos or government as a whole
• Parliament and parliament committees
• Political parties and so forth
Foreign policy analysis
• The central focus of foreign policy analysis is on the intentions, statements,
and actions of an actor-often, but not always, a state-directed toward the
external world and the response of other actors to these intentions,
statements, and actions
• Beyond this, however, there is no clear consensus on how the field should be
defined.
• For good reason, Rosenau has called foreign policy a "bridging discipline,"
one with "limitless boundaries" that must deal with "the continuing erosion
of the distinction between domestic and foreign issues, between the
sociopolitical and economic processes that unfold at home and those that
transpire abroad"
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Foreign policy analysis
• Foreign policy analyses can be descriptive, evaluative, or analytical.
– Descriptive studies establish the facts regarding foreign policy decisions,
policies declared publicly, actions taken, and the official and de facto
relationships among state and nonstate international actors.
– Foreign policy evaluation considers the consequences of foreign policy
actions and assesses whether the goals were desirable and if they were
achieved.
– analytical study of foreign policy: the societal, governmental, and
individual inputs that affect foreign policy choice
Foreign Policy Structures
• In this context, the term structure refers to the organizational configurations within which
foreign policymaking takes place.
– This can include a broad set of formal institutions and how they are organized (e.g., the U.S.
Department of State, the National Security Council), and/or may also include a focus on
how much smaller decision-making groups are structured or configured in a crisis.
– The suggestion that policymaking structures need to be part of the focus of foreign policy
analysis can be found in the early emphasis on the study of foreign policy decision making.
– Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin, argues that research attention be focused on the explanation of
discrete decisions, remind us of the importance of the context of decision:
– "The definition of the situation which we consider to be central to the explanation of state
behavior results from decision-making processes in an organizational context. ...
– To ignore this context omits a range of factors which significantly influence the behavior of
decision-makers (and therefore state behavior), including not only the critical problem of
how choices are made but also the conditions under which choices are made"
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Foreign Policy Structures
• Following on this discussion, Robinson and Snyder argue that there are three major clusters of factors
that explain decision outcomes:
– the occasion for decision,
– the individual
– and the organizational context in which the individual operates
• With respect to organizational factors, they assert that decision makers do not act only in an individual
capacity when they make foreign policy decisions, they also act within an organizational environment.
• An integral part of the study of policymaking, then, must be the "organization" cluster of variables
• There has been much scholarly attention to the structures of routine foreign policymaking, much of
which has sought to document the organizational configuration of specific departments or foreign
policy organizations, or to track the structure of the relationships between various foreign policy
organizations in policymaking.
• For example "Executive Office of the President"
– a large staff that works for the president and vice-president to coordinate and plan policymaking.
– The Eberstadt report, issued in 1945, focused specifically on the problem of foreign policy
coordination and recommended the establishment of a "national security council" to facilitate such
coordination.
Foreign Policy Structures
– The Report of the Commission 011 the Organization of Government jor the Conduct of
Foreign Policy (1975) explored the organization and administration of foreign
policy.
– these studies have largely sought to describe and examine the structures of
foreign policymaking and to recommend how to reorganize these units.
• Foreign policy research has examined American presidents' management of
foreign policy bureaucracies.
• Research in this tradition has been largely descriptive (and sometimes critical)
of the organization and management of the foreign policy bureaucracy by
particular presidents, and has focused on the difficulties that leaders face in
trying to manage foreign policy bureaucracies.
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Advisory Structures and Studying Crises
• Case studies of crises and biographies and autobiographies provide a wealth
of descriptive information about decision-making groups.
• The memoirs of McGeorge Bundy (1988), Clark Clifford (1991), and Paul
Nitze (1989), for example reflect on the activities of presidents' advisers
across a variety of foreign policy issues.
• Unfortunately, case studies are rarely written with the expressed purpose of
trying to extract lessons about the relationship between decision structures
and decision-making processes during crises.
• Nor have many foreign policy analysts tried to return to case studies and
extract from them general lessons about the relationship between structure
and process.
Advisory Structures and Studying Crises
• A substantial amount of attention in the social science literature also has been
given to the structure and organization of advisory groups in policymaking
– For example Barrett (1988) draws on data from appointment logs and other
sources to discuss the important role of President Johnson's advisers in the
execution of the Vietnam War.
– Moens (1991) investigates the role of Carter's advisers leading up to and
following the fall of Iran's Shah.
– Hult (1993) argues that future research in this area should focus on the
"networks" of advisers that are at work during different types of
,policymaking (e.g., domestic policy, foreign policy, crises) so that stronger
proposition about the role of advisers may be derived.
– Research has also sought to understand how U.S. presidents have organized
the White House for policymaking and have begun to explore the possible
effects of those structures on policymaking
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Advisory Structures and Studying Crises
• In Organizing the Presidency (1988), Hess tracks the ways that modern U.S. presidents have structured White
House operations.
• Besides describing the organizational styles of each administration, Hess discusses how presidents "learn" from
the perceived organizational mistakes of each former president in an effort to fine-tune the structure of
policymaking.
– For example, John F. Kennedy perceived problems in policymaking due to President Eisenhower's
formalistic and hierarchical policymaking structures, so President Kennedy designed a less-structured,
collegial organization for policymaking, which created its own difficulties
– Burke and Greenstein (1989) examine the importance of advisory groups as well as presidential
personality and the political environment during two cases of American decision making about VietnamEisenhower
in 1954 and Johnson in 1964-65.
• They seek to explain why two presidents who were faced with very similar problems responded in such very different ways.
• Their analysis indicates that the way presidents organize advisory groups may have an important impact on the process of
decision making, but that the individual president's style and the political climate also affect the process of decision making.
• Johnson explores how a president "manage[s] a team of men to provide him with information, staff out his alternatives, and
otherwise extend his reach" (1974, xxii) so that the president can be successful at leadership and policymaking.
– Many of the studies suggest that a link exists between structure, process, and policy performance;
• they assume a relationship to exist between sound organizational structures and sound policymaking and policy.
• they have failed to explicate the links between foreign policy structures, policymaking processes, and policy outputs in ways
that would allow us to draw even contingent generalizations about the relationships between these variables.
Advisory Structures and Studying Crises
• Structure advisory networks and the resulting impact on information processing.
• There have been some recent attempts to refine the (formalistic, competitive, and collegial models)
– but little empirical research on this topic that lends new insights.
• Furthermore, much of the research mentioned here has focused on routine foreign policymaking, not
on crisis decision making.
• The applicability of this research for understanding the relationship between structure and process in
crises is extremely limited.
• Crises are situations characterized by the perceptions of decision makers of
– a serious threat to national values or interests that may come about as
– a surprise with
– relatively little time to respond
• Crises are situations that include a high likelihood that force will be used
• During these situations, the dominant disciplinary view seems to suggest, decision making is controlled
by a few elite leaders and is highly personal, driven by individual perceptions of the situation.
• Structure may cease to be Important during these situations as personalities increase in significance in
the policymaking process.
• If crises heighten the importance of a small group of leaders-the "ultimate decision unit"
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Advisory Structures and Studying
Crises
• Charles Hermann proposes a research strategy employed in this perspective seeks to discover the impact of
different "decision units" on foreign policy behavior.
• Specifically, research has focused on how different decision units can lead to different types of foreign policy
behavior, such as how prone each unit is to use force.
• Theoretical research has focused on the impact of three different types of ultimate decision units:
– predominant leaders
– multiple autonomous actors
– small groups
• Janis’s Crucial Decisions 1989 in tries to develop an understanding of how the management of a policymaking
group can eliminate "avoidable errors" in decision making.
• His goal is to examine management strategies that may lead to "vigilant problem solving."
• While much of Janis's book examines procedures (and thus may fit better in the discussion of process that
follows), in his concluding chapter he presents a number of propositions about how leaders can manage or
structure the process of decision making so as to make it more effective.
• These efforts to study structure may provide a framework that can allow researchers to examine how the
business of policymaking-the gathering and processing of information, providing advice, and performing
analysis-proceeds under different management structures during crises
Foreign Policy Processes
• In this context, the term process refers to the steps or tasks performed
by a group that lead to a decision or policy choice being made, such as
conceptualizing goals and objectives, searching for information, and
developing contingency plans.
• Anderson has argued that "at least a few individuals should focus on
developing theories which describe the process of policy making in
foreign affairs" (1987, 285).
– His research on "process theory" suggests that policymaking in
organizational settings involves deciding among many policy
alternatives, relatively few of which are mutually inconsistent,
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Foreign Policy Processes
• One tactic for studying the process of policymaking has been the in-depth case study.
• The goal here is to examine the details of a historical case and from that attention to detail extract lessons about how the process
of policymaking works.
• Comparative case study designs may be employed as well that seek to "trace" the process of decision making and compare it from
one case to another
• Examples of this approach include the comparative research by George and Smoke (1974) on deterrence cases in American
foreign policy;
• Probably the most well-known study of the process of decision making is Janis's Groupthink (1982).
– Janis was motivated to explain performance failures, such as the American fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, by examining the
internal dynamics or group processes that lead ultimately to group decisions.
– "Groupthink" is when individuals within "cohesive" groups seek unanimity or concurrence to such an extent that they
cease to vigilantly perform the tasks of decision making.
– Janis hypothesized that the presence of groupthink during the process of decision making might lead to performance or
policy failures.
– As a psychological phenomenon that occurs inside human beings, however, groupthink cannot be directly observed.
– To cope With this problem, Janis argued that groupthink produces behavioral consequences or symptoms that can be
observed. These symptoms include, for example, illusions of iinvulnerability of the group, stereotyping of "outgroups,"
and self-appointed "mindguards“ who protect the unanimity of the group from dissent.
Foreign Policy Processes
• Janis proposed that the presence of groupthink made it less likely that decision-making groups would perform thoroughly the
tasks of decision making; or, in other words, that groupthink made it likely that the decision-making process would include several
malfunctions.
• These malfunctions include:
– the failure to survey objectives;
– the failure to survey alternatives;
– the failure to examine risks of the preferred choice;
– the failure to reappraise initially rejected alternatives;
– the failure to search for information;
– a bias in processing information; and
– the failure to work out contingency plans (Janis 1982, 175)
• Janis proposed that these procedural malfunctions, caused by groupthink, might lead to policy failures.
• Problems with groupthink have been discussed in a variety of places
• One of the central problems revolves around the issue of group cohesion, which Janis sees as detrimental to effective decision
making.
• What constitutes a "cohesive group"? Making an objective determination about this is difficult. For how long must a group be
"cohesive" for the seeds of groupthink to take root? This too is unclear. And why might the same group of people who were
victims of group think at one point (e.g., the Bay of Pigs) not be victims of it during the deliberations over other issues, even
those considered at the same time as the process leading to the fiasco?
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Foreign Policy Processes
• Finally, there is the problem with determining what is a policy "failure."
• objective criteria by which to determine whether or not a policy was a "success" or a "failure."
• Analysts may hold the outcome "up against" the stated objectives of a policy to try to determine this
• Experts may argue about whether a policy was a success or a failure based upon their subjective standards and
intuition.
• And analysts can be clear and explicit about assigning such a value to a policy outcome.
• Nevertheless, the problem of valuing an outcome remains.
• What looks like a failure to some can look like a success to others.
• In a manner similar to Janis, George (Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of
• Information and Advice, 1980) argues that there are several critical procedural tasks in effective decision making.
– He argues that decision-making groups must ensure that sufficient information about the situation at hand is
obtained and analyzed so that it provides policymakers with an incisive and valid diagnosis of the problem.
– They must facilitate consideration of all the major values and interests affected by the policy issue at hand.
– They must assure a search for a relatively wide range of options and a reasonably thorough evaluation of the
expected consequences of each option.
– They must provide for careful consideration of the problems that may arise in implementing the options under
consideration. And finally, George asserts that they must remain receptive to indications that current policies are
not working out well, and cultivate the ability to learn from experience
Foreign Policy Processes
• Drawing on this concept of decision making, George identifies nine common malfunctions
of an advisory process.
• These include, for example
– when the president and advisers agree too readily on the nature of the problem facing them
and on a response to it;
– when advisers and advocates take different positions and debate them before the president
but their disagreements do not cover the full range of relevant hypotheses and alternative
options;
– when advisers thrash out their own disagreements over policy without the president’s
knowledge and confront the president with a unanimous recommendation;
– and when the president is impressed by the consensus among the advisers but fails to
ascertain how firm the consensus is, how it was achieved, and whether it was justified
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Bridging Studies of Structure and
Process: An Institutional Approach
• That foreign policy analysis has largely not developed conceptualizations of, a body of empirical research that
focuses on, the relationship between structure and process
– sociology and economics increasing attention is being paid to structure and process within the area of overlap
between organization theory, institutional theory, and political and social choice
• Within this common ground can be found a renewed emphasis on institutions within political science,
economics, law, and public management.
• The philosophy that ties these approaches together is the proposition that to understand political decision
making it is vital to understand the impact that institutional structures, socialization, norms, expectations, rules,
and selection mechanisms have on individual decision makers and thus the process of policymaking
• Within political science, research from an institutional perspective has largely focused on the institutions of
government (such as studies of the U.S. Congress) and on international regimes within international relations.
• Keohane argues that the term "institution" may refer to
– "a general pattern or categorization of activity or to a particular human constructed arrangement, formally or
informally organized, that persists over time" (1988, 383).
– Rules are institutional arrangements. Ostrom defines rules as potentially linguistic entities that refer to
prescriptions commonly known and used by a set of participants to order repetitive, interdependent relationships.
They specify what actions are required, prohibited, and/or permitted (1986,5).
Bridging Studies of Structure and
Process: An Institutional Approach
• In summary, political institutions are sets of rules, constructed by men and
women, that set the context for political action.
– "Institutional structures refer both to the organizational characteristics of groups
and to the rules and norms that guide the relationships between actors"
(Ikenberry 1988,223).
• This conception of an institution can be especially useful to foreign policy
analysts because it focuses on both the formal and informal structures used in
decision making an integral part of political decision making.
• It concentrates attention on the "rules in use" in a decision situation, the rules and
norms that are known by members of the group, even if they remain unstated.
• The existence of the rules of the institution can be inferred from the behavior of
members of the institution.
• .
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Bridging Studies of Structure and
Process: An Institutional Approach
• Research by those who share an "institutional perspective" is diverse, and views on what institutions are
and how they affect policymaking vary widely.
• Two characteristics are central to an institutional perspective.
– First, this approach emphasizes the derivative character of individual behavior. It focuses on how
individual action is shaped by institutional settings. This perspective stresses that preferences are
not exogenously determined; rather, they are developed through involvement in political activity
that is structured by institutional arrangements.
– Second, in order to be an institution, a set of roles, rules, or behavioral patterns must persist. It is
through an Iterative process that institutions affect individuals and thus political life.
• Keohane states that "institutions do not merely reflect the preferences and power of units constituting
them; the institutions themselves shape thesese preferences and that power" (1988, 382).
• He argues that institutions mediate the types of action that will emerge from a process.
• If political action is to be the object of study, then the links that exist between observable behaviors and
identifiable institutional settings must be explored.
Bridging Studies of Structure and
Process: An Institutional Approach
• Ikenberry argues that institutional structures "serve to mediate the interests and
capacities of individuals and groups" (1988, 243).
• He urges increased research effort on the nature of these "constraining and
enabling circumstances" as they impact on political processes.
• Krasner (1988), drawing on the insights of evolutionary biology and epistemology
(e.g., see Gould 1989; Mayr 1982), states that an institutional perspective regards
enduring institutional structures as the building blocks of social and political life
• The preferences, capabilities, and basic self-identities of individuals are
conditioned by these institutional structures; in this sense historical developments
are path-dependent.
• Future decisions and actions, he argues, are constrained and guided by past
decisions and arrangements; institutional settings are the genesis of future
perceptions, preferences, and political action.
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Environment & Decision Units
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Environment & Decision Units
• Two questions must be addressed if we are going to get inside the
“black box” of government to understand the relevance of leadership
to foreign policymaking:
– (1) What types of actors make foreign policy decisions?
– (2) What is the effect of these decision units on the resulting foreign
policy?
Environment & Decision Units
• An examination of how governments and ruling parties around the
world make foreign policy decisions suggests that authority is exercised
by an extensive array of different entities
• Among those making policy are prime ministers, presidents, party
secretaries, standing committees, military juntas, cabinets,
bureaucracies, interagency groups, legislatures, and loosely structured
revolutionary coalitions.
• When we contemplate engaging in systematic comparisons of
governmental decision-making bodies across and within countries, the
number of possibilities becomes formidable.
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Environment & Decision Units
• There are numerous domestic and international factors that can and do
influence foreign policy behavior, these influences are necessarily channeled
through the political apparatus of a government that identifies, decides, and
implements foreign policy.
• Policy is made by people configured in various ways depending on the nature
of the problem and the structure of the government.
• There is within any government an individual or a set of individuals with the
ability to commit the resources of the society and, when faced with a
problem, the authority to make a decision that cannot be readily reversed.
– We call this set of decision makers the “authoritative decision unit” and seek
to understand how it shapes foreign policy decision making across diverse
situations and issues as well as different political settings
The Decision Units Framework
• Who speaks for Iran?
• Who made the decisions that put Iran on a course of confrontation
with other states over its possible acquisition of nuclear weapons?
• Which voice coming from Iran counted the most when leaders and
analysts in other countries tried to predict what Iranian motivations
and intentions were on the nuclear issue?
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The Decision Units Framework
• Realists would answer that there are persistent Iranian national interests—say, to become a
great power—and that individual persons sitting in particular positions in the Iranian
government are all committed to the national interests.
• Cognitive scholars might want to use the speeches and actions of Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to construct an operational code that would help outsiders
understand Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology.
• These same scholars might want to take into account the operational codes of others in the
government as well; for instance, it would be useful to understand the worldview of
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
• Ahmadinejad and Khamenei might have the same basic objective to make Iran a great
power, but they might hold different opinions about how best to achieve that objective.
• Can the analyst conclude that the supreme leader’s opinion is the one that matters? What if
Khamenei stayed silent on certain foreign policy issues, deferring to known as well as
behind-the-scenes politicians to make policies?
The Decision Units Framework
• What we hope to identify is the ultimate decision maker.
• As Margaret Hermann and Charles Hermann explain,
– [recognizing] that numerous domestic and international factors can and do
influence foreign policy behavior, these influences must be channeled through
the political structure of a government that identifies, decides, and
implements foreign policy.
– Within this structure is a set of authorities with the ability to commit the
resources of the society and, with respect to a particular problem, the
authority to make a decision that cannot be readily reversed.
• This set of authorities the “ultimate decision unit,” even though in reality
the unit may consist of multiple separate bodies rather than a single entity.
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Leaders Do Not Decide Alone
• Note that whether or not one individual bears the ultimate responsibility for foreign policy
decision making does not depend on whether that country is a democracy.
– The democratic country (the United States) has one person who is the ultimate decision
maker, whereas Argentina was at the time of the Falklands/Malvinas crisis a nondemocratic
country with a group as the ultimate decision maker.
– Additionally, within one country foreign policy decisions can be made by different decision
units at different times or concerning different types of issues.
– An ultimate decision unit is defined as the person or the group who are in a position not
only to make a foreign policy decision but also to prevent any other entity within the
government from explicitly reversing that decision.
– Especially important with regard to the first element of this decision is that the person or
group can use the resources of the government, such as its military, to enforce their
decision.
– For instance, during the Falklands crisis, Prime Minister Thatcher’s decision to send the
military to retake the islands was not easily reversed by any other person or agency Within
the British government.
The Decision Units Framework
• Who speaks for Iran?
• Who is the ultimate decision unit?
• U.S. president George W. Bush has tended to attribute all Iranian foreign
policy decisions to Ahmadinejad.
• Neoconservative supporters of the president have called for “regime change”
that would take Ahmadinejad out of power and put in someone else.
• But regime change that is limited to Ahmadinejad and his advisers or even to
the presidency and the parliament would not change ultimate decision making
in Iran.
• Power in Iran is split between different leadership roles and different elected
and non-elected groups.
• The power structure and, therefore, the identity of the ultimate decision unit
in Iran is complicated and opaque.
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The Decision Units Framework
• Understanding who speaks for Iran means understanding the configuration of the ultimate
decision unit and the decision-making rules governing conflict within that unit.
• The decision units framework goes beyond who may sit in the foreign policy decisionmaking
circle.
• This framework tells us that different entities may exist for different foreign policy
decisions.
• The most important part of the decision unit approach is its emphasis on understanding
the dynamics or the processes by which decisions are made given the different
configurations possible for the ultimate decision unit.
• Many of the expectations about the dynamics at play derive from the cognitive and
personality studies of leadership.
• According to Hermann and Hermann There are three basic decision units
– the single, predominant leader (powerful leader)
– the single group
– coalition of autonomous actors
There are three types of possible
authoritative decision units
• There are three types of possible authoritative decision units.
– 1. Predominant Leader:
• A single individual who has the ability to stifle all opposition and dissent
as well as the power to make a decision alone, if necessary.
– 2. Single Group:
• A set of individuals, all of whom are members of a single body, who
collectively select a course of action in consultation with each other.
– 3. Coalition of Autonomous Actors:
• The necessary actors are separate individuals, groups, or representatives
of institutions which, if some or all concur, can act for the government,
but no one of which by itself has the ability to decide and force
compliance on the others; moreover, no overarching authoritative body
exists in which all these actors are members.
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Leaders Do Not Decide Alone
• President Truman had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that read, “the buck stops
here.”
– He referred to its meaning in his farewell address in January 1953, saying that the “greatest
part of the President’s job is to make decisions—big ones and small ones, dozens of them
almost every day. . . .
– The President—whoever he is—has to decide.
– He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.
• Truman referenced was that he had the ultimate responsibility for U.S. foreign policy.
• In his view, others in government could “pass the buck” to someone else up the chain of
command, but once on the desk of the president, a decision had to be made.
• His statement nicely expresses two interconnected elements of political decision making:
one, he implies that a single person bears the ultimate responsibility for making foreign
policy decisions and two, that policy making is conducted through hierarchical
organizations.
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The Decision Units Framework:
Predominant Leader
• The predominant leader is a “single individual [who] has the power to make the choice and
to stifle opposition.”
• Not all single, predominant leaders are the same
• It is important to know whether “a leader’s orientation to foreign affairs leads him [or her]
to be relatively sensitive or insensitive to information from the political environment.”
– A sensitive predominant leader is likely to use diplomacy and cooperation, taking an
incremental approach to action in order to stay tuned to feedback from the environment.
– An insensitive leader is not open to external influence and so knowledge of his or her
personality or operational code is important.
• Drawing upon cognitive studies, Hermann and Hermann explain that
– “If a leader’s orientation suggests that he has a strongly held view of the world and uses his
view as a lens through which to select and interpret incoming information, the leader is likely
to be looking only for cues that confirm his beliefs when making foreign policy decisions. As
a result, he will be relatively insensitive to discrepant advice and data.”
Leaders Do Not Decide Alone
– In sum, determining who has the ultimate power to decide is not simply a function of the
type of government but depends on identifying whether a single individual or a group has
the ultimate authority to make a foreign policy decision.
– Making such a determination depends on substantive knowledge about the government in
question.
– The bottom line is that the ultimate decision maker is not always a single individual, as
Truman noted with regard to his own situation as President of the United States Truman’s
farewell address also implied that foreign policy is made through hierarchical organizations.
– Another part of the previous quotation reads, “The papers may circulate around the
Government for a while but they finally reach this desk. And then, there’s no place else for
them to go.”
– Truman portrayed his office as situated at the top of the hierarchy and as the last stop in the
decision making process.
– This reflected the way he organized his White House and communications with various
departments.
– However, not all U.S. presidents, and certainly not all leaders, strive for this type of
streamlined communications. Some leaders purposely build multiple channels of
information into their advisory systems.
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Leaders Do Not Decide Alone
• A leader’s personality is likely to affect how she or he organizes the executive.
• Some leaders gain insight from hearing their advisors debate issues in their presence, while
others like to ponder the policy options their advisors provide to them in solitude.
• It also matters whether a leader wishes to be actively involved in foreign policy making,
actively seeking out information and shaping the policy options, or, conversely, prefers to
rely on the expertise of trusted advisors who help define issues and gather information.
• In sum, there are many aspects of a leader’s personality that influence how that leader treats
information—and how much information she or he requires.
• This has implications for the organization of an effective advisory system.
• The tip of the iceberg consists of the leader and her or his immediate advisors.
• The rest of the iceberg is the so-called permanent bureaucracy on which leaders rely for the
information that shapes their policies and the implementation of their decisions.
• Although we know the bureaucracy is there, we are not always sure of what those working
within the bureaucracy do or how their work influences foreign policy decisions
The Tip of the Iceberg
Organizing the Executive
• The people with whom a leader surrounds her- or himself matter.
• It is through the leader’s conversations with the immediate circle of
advisors and associates that policy decisions take shape.
• Although Truman portrayed himself as the final arbiter in the decision
making process, he would have admitted that his advisors shaped his
policies in significant ways.
• There is no such thing as a perfect advisory system: each system has its
own pitfalls.
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The Tip of the Iceberg
Organizing the Executive
• The formalistic approach to organizing the executive emphasizes a hierarchical structure
with a clear chain of command.
• This does not mean that the executive office of every leader who has employed this type of
organization could be depicted with the same organizational chart.
• Rather, it means that leaders who employ this type of organizational structure endeavor to
create an orderly decision process.
• Advisors each provide the leader with information on those aspects of a problem that is
within their area of expertise and under the jurisdiction of their departments.
• The emphasis is on analysis and on making the “best” decision possible.
• Although such a hierarchical structure appears orderly and efficient, it may not be possible
for a leader who sits at the top of such an advisory system to know whether information
has been left out or distorted as it made its way up the organizational ladder, because
leaders who employ this type of organizational structure seldom, if ever, circumvent the
official chain of command.
The Tip of the Iceberg
Organizing the Executive
• The discussion of the advisory system has thus far largely focused on instances where there
is a single leader with substantial control over the design of the advisory system.
• Depending on the political system of a specific society, the leader may have more or less
leeway in structuring the advisory system and choosing her or his advisors.
• The more a leader has the ability to place his or her stamp on the organization of the
executive, the more his or her personality will factor into the organizational structure.
• In a presidential system of government, for instance, the executive branch of government
is separate from the legislative branch.
• The president is elected independently and does not owe her or his position to the support
of the legislature, although a troubled relationship with the legislature can render policy
making difficult.
• In a presidential system, the president usually has substantial leeway in organizing the
executive to suit her or his decision making style, just as she or he has great autonomy in the
selection of her or his advisors.
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The Tip of the Iceberg
Organizing the Executive
• In a parliamentary system, on the other hand, the prime minister owes her or his position directly to
the support of the legislature.
• If the legislature withdraws its support, for instance through a vote of no confidence, the prime
minister is forced to resign.
• In a parliamentary system, the composition of the executive is less clearly determined by a single
individual, depending in part on the electoral system of the country.
• In cases where a single party tends to win a parliamentary majority, a prime minister may exercise
somewhat greater influence over the composition of government and the advisory system.
• In cases where governments are composed of several political parties, such as in coalition cabinet
government, the advisory system as a whole is less likely to be structured to suit a single personality.
Rather, each member of the executive structures only a small circle of advisors in the department over
which she or he presides.
• A cabinet government is a group of ministers who jointly constitute the executive of a country. They
usually have collective responsibility, which means that each minister is expected to publicly support
all cabinet decisions.
• Personal disagreements with collective decisions may not be voiced publicly. When the cabinet is made
up of a coalition of political parties, meaning that two or more political parties jointly form the
government, the collective responsibility for political decision making is borne by ministers who are
affiliated with different political parties and have different political views and priorities.
The Government Bureaucracy
• A thread that runs through the discussion of the organizational structure of the advisory system is that
inaccurate, incomplete, and biased information makes its way through such policy making bodies.
• In some cases, information is not accurate simply because someone made a mistake or did not research
thoroughly enough to discover (through consultation of alternative sources) that their information was
not reliable.
• As the discussion of information distortion makes clear, not all failures in policy making can be blamed
on such problems.
• That does not mean that distortions are deliberate efforts to misinform. No matter how well the
advisory system works, it remains a political system.
• Advisors have their own perspectives on the world, as well as their own interests and ambitions. Even
advisors who are appointed by the leader will not always perceive their interests to be perfectly aligned
with that leader.
• Conversely, members of the permanent bureaucracy are not necessarily antagonistic to the leaders’
political agenda. In the end, policy choices are the result of a “dynamic influence process” in which
advisors do much more than “merely collecting, processing, and interpreting information.”
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The Government Bureaucracy
• Each of the three approaches to organizing the advisory system addresses these issues in its
own way.
• Interestingly, the formalistic model endeavors to follow the decision making process
prescribed by the normative model of rationality
• Both the normative model of rationality and the formalistic approach to the advisory
system emphasize finding the “best” solution on the basis of thorough analysis of the
problem and the available policy options.
• Both downplay the role of politics in decision making.
• Neither is intended to describe the actual practice of policy making. Instead, the normative
model of rationality outlines how policy ought to be made, whereas the formalistic approach
organizes the relationships between the various individuals who are employed as members of
the leader’s advisory system. To achieve a better understanding of the inner workings of the
advisory system, we will need to delve into efforts to describe the actual advisory process.
The Tip of the Iceberg
Organizing the Executive
• This drawback of the formalistic approach to organizing the executive is the strength of the
competitive approach.
• There is little cooperation between advisors in this type of advisory system. Instead, all are keenly aware
that the leader can access information from a variety of sources, including the subordinates of the
department heads, which creates an atmosphere of competition and conflict.
• Advisors all vie for the leader’s ear and rush to be the first to convey new information, either so they can
present the information in a way that portrays their department favorably or so they can play a crucial
role in the framing, or representation, of the policy problem.
• As a result, advisors are likely to present partial, incomplete, or biased information.
• Leaders arrive at a complete, or at least balanced, view of issues as a result of reconciling these various
viewpoints.
• The internal competition can be hard on the leader’s advisors and may result in high staff turnover. It
also demands a lot of the leader’s time and attention.
• When used well, it does place that leader at the hub of an extensive informational network. In doing so,
this approach can generate creative solutions, because there is a confluence of many different ideas and
viewpoints at the center of government. Furthermore, this system is also very good at generating
solutions that are feasible: ideas are modified and tempered as a result of the interplay with other ideas,
as well as the need to defend ideas in debate with others. Hence, the competitive system, if managed
well, can generate solutions that are at once creative, politically acceptable, and bureaucratically doable.
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The Tip of the Iceberg
Organizing the Executive
• Collegial approach - a third alternative takes advantage of the benefits that flow from obtaining a
multiplicity of views but endeavors to cultivate a spirit of teamwork rather than competition.
• As in the competitive advisory system, the leader sits at the center of an extensive informational
network.
• Advisors do not provide their information to the leader individually but debate policy options with one
another as a group.
• The objective of such discussions is to achieve a frank exchange of ideas—but without the conflict that
accompanies the competitive system—and arrive at innovative policy proposals.
• The leader communicates directly with advisors but at times also reaches out to the subordinates of
department heads and obtains information outside of the formal chain of command.
• In the collegial approach, the emphasis is on teamwork rather than competition.
• The difficulty in making the collegial approach work is that it requires a delicate balance of diversity of
opinion, mediating differences, and fostering a team spirit.
• Not all leaders have the skills to manage the interpersonal relations between their advisors to
successfully maintain a collegial system across time.
The Tip of the Iceberg
Organizing the Executive
• Each of the three approaches to the advisory system has its own
advantages and disadvantages.
• Table on the next slide summarizes these with the help of four
questions that are implied in the description of the pros and cons of
each approach to organizing the executive.
•
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The Government Bureaucracy
• It is tempting to assume that foreign policy decisions are the result of a rational process in which the various
agencies, departments, and offices that collectively constitute the government jointly serve an agreed-upon
national interest.
– If this were the case, the rational policy model might provide a fairly accurate description of how foreign policy
is made.
– It assumes that foreign policy is made as if a single, rational decision maker analyzes a strategic problem and, once
the problem is defined, selects a policy response from among the available options.
– The process by which the policy response is selected starts by outlining the options, investigates the likely
consequences of each, and settles on the option that promises the biggest benefit at the lowest possible risk
and/or cost.
– Fundamental to the analysis, as well as the judgment of cost and benefit, is the desire to serve the state’s interests.
This rational policy model does not take into account the possibility that information could become distorted in a
complex advisory system made up of many individuals, offices, and agencies. Neither does it take into account
that identifying the national interest is not necessarily straightforward.
– Here, we delve into two alternative descriptions of the decision making process, the organizational process
model and the bureaucratic politics model, which were originally created as critiques of the rational policy
model. Both models take into account that there are usually multiple perspectives on any given policy problem,
but they stress different reasons for the existence of those multiple perspectives.
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The Government Bureaucracy
• The organizational process model envisions the government as a collection of
organizations, centrally coordinated at the top, each with their own specialties and expertise,
but also its own priorities and perceptions.
• Each organization, moreover, has its own customary ways or standard operating
procedures, which is often abbreviated as SOPs.
• According to this model, organizations respond to such situations by adapting rather than
reinventing their standard operating procedures.
• Adaptation consists of small and incremental changes to standard procedures. Such changes
are easier to implement, even if they are not an adequate response to the problem they are
intended to address.
• And that is the key to this model: it describes government as a large conglomerate of
organizations that, singly and collectively, pursues policy responses that permit them to
stick as closely as possible to well-worn routines that they know to be feasible rather than to
fashion policy responses that best respond to the problem.
• According to this model, then, inadequate policy responses do not result from a failure to
objectively evaluate the risks and benefits associated with various options, but from the
inertia of established organizations
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The Decision Units Framework:
Single Groups And The Groupthink Syndrome
• The single group is a
– “set of individuals, all of whom are members of a single body, [that] collectively select a course of action in face-to-face
interaction.”
• Group may be as small as two people or
– “as large as a parliament of hundreds, so long as there is a collective, interactive decision process in which all the members
who are needed to make authoritative commitments participate.”
• The individuals in this single group must be able to “form or change their positions on a problem without outside consultation,”
– that is, the members of the single group are not bound by decisions made elsewhere and do not need to defend those
decisions made elsewhere.
• set of individuals, all of whom are members of a single body, who collectively select a course of action in consultation with each
other.
• For instance
– the British cabinet and the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party
• Crucial to understanding decision making in the single group is understanding the “techniques used for managing conflict in the
group” and the degree to which group loyalty is required.
• Closed single groups that privilege group loyalty and suppress dissent are associated with the notion of groupthink.
– Groupthink is a process described by Irving Janis.
– The small group locked in such a process puts the maintenance of the group and the loyalty of its members at the center
of its purpose as a group, rather than focusing on the problem to be solved.
– The group self-monitors or self-polices to suppress nonconforming views from within and discounts information from
outside sources that might challenge the group’s judgment and inherent morality.
The Decision Units Framework:
Single Groups And The Groupthink Syndrome
• Group identity, rather than group cohesiveness, is the crucial variable for this
research team in their study of small groups.
• Members of the small group are assumed to have different identities.
• The primary issue is whether group members have their primary identities in
the small group or in their “home” departments or agencies.
• Ultimately, Hermann, Stein, Sundelius, and Walker create a decision tree that
takes the researcher through different branches exploring the role of leaders
and group decision-making norms.
– These branches lead to four possible decision types: the adoption of the
dominant solution, a deadlocked solution, an integrative solution, and a subset
solution.
– Table on the next slide
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The Decision Units Framework:
Single Groups And The Groupthink Syndrome
• The first point in this decision tree is to ask whether the members’ primary identity lies with
the group
• If yes, then the second question is whether the leader suppresses dissent.
• If the answer is yes, the next question is whether the group norms reinforce the leader’s
suppression of dissent.
• If the answer is yes, then it is very likely that the dominant solution advocated by the leader
will be selected.
• Alternatively, the answer to the second question—does the leader suppress dissent—could
be no.
• Then, the researcher asks whether group norms discourage dissent.
• If the answer is no, then the question is does the group evaluate multiple options regarding
the problem at hand?
• If no, then the dominant solution advocated by the leader is very likely to be chosen. If the
group does evaluate multiple options, then it is likely that the group will choose an
integrative solution that is “agreed to by all involving some shift from initial preferences.”
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The Decision Units Framework:
Single Groups And The Groupthink Syndrome
• If the answer to the first question is no—the members’ primary identities are
not with the group—then we take different branches in the tree.
• Following the next question to ask is do all members have the same initial
preferences?
• If no, then do the decision rules require that all members agree?
• If no, is the group expected to meet again on other issues and continue as a
group?
• If the answer is no, then is there a respected minority within the group that
expresses intense preferences?
• If no, then it is likely that the solution will be one that reflects a subset of the
group members’ preferences.
Multiple Autonomous Actors
and Bureaucratic Politics
• The third decision unit in the framework proposed by Hermann and Hermann is
that of a coalition of multiple autonomous actors.
• In this unit, the “necessary actors are separate individuals, groups, or coalitions
which, if some or all concur, can act for the government, but no one of which
has the ability to decide and force compliance on the others; moreover, no
overarching authoritative body exists in which all the necessary parties are members.”
• As always, the analyst must determine the rules for interaction in the group,
especially those governing conflict and whether the group must form a
unanimous or plurality decision.
• Complicating interactions within this decision unit is the problem that members
of the coalition are “representatives of multiple autonomous actors have no
authority except as agents of their respective entities.”
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Multiple Autonomous Actors
and Bureaucratic Politics
• To understand this decision unit, we need to understand that the members are motivated to
protect the interests of the groups they represent.
• Thus we must understand some of the basic assumptions of what is called the bureaucratic
politics model.
• This model is also called the organizational politics model, particularly in the work of
Graham Allison.
• Allison and Philip Zelikow explain the basics of the model in this way
– The nature of foreign policy problems permits fundamental disagreement among reasonable
people about how to solve them. Because most players participate in policymaking by virtue
of their role, for example as secretary of the Treasury or the ambassador to the United
Nations, it is quite natural that each feels special responsibility to call attention to the
ramifications of an issue for his or her domain. . . . Because their preferences and beliefs are
related to the different organizations they represent, their analyses yield conflicting
recommendations.
Multiple Autonomous Actors
and Bureaucratic Politics
• In such a system dominated by parochial interests, “government decisions and actions result from a
political process.”
• The political process is dominated, as always, by a competition for resources.
• The competition for resources can be “won” by being the actor/group that dominates discussion of the
policy choices.
• This means that “the domestic objectives of bureaucrats may be more significant than the international
objectives of governments.”
• For the chief executive who awaits policy recommendations from different relevant bureaucracies, he or
she may find that the recommendations are limited and skewed because they are the result of
compromises that were reached among competing agencies to suit their ownbureaucratic needs.
• In the multiple autonomous decision-making unit, the chief executive is one of many actors involved in
the bargaining process that eventually results in a decision.
• Drawing from the single-group discussion above, we know that chief executives and others may play the
role of broker among different interests in order to try to put together an integrative or subset solution.
But, of course, at times the process may also tend to stalemate and deadlock.
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Core Assumptions of the Decision
Units Approach
• These works overview decision-making “models” that focus on bureaucratic politics, group
dynamics, presidential advisory systems, governmental politics, leadership, coalition politics,
and the strategies for dealing with domestic opposition.
• The decision units framework attempts to integrate this extant research literature.
• The approach is grounded in three assumptions about foreign policymaking
• that merit some discussion.
– (1) These so-called models of decision making examine decision units that are found in most
governments, yet researchers have wanted to declare one a winner—“the” explanation for
how foreign policy decisions are made. The literature does not facilitate our understanding
of foreign policymaking by treating them as separate, complementary frameworks for
explaining the essence of decision.
– (2) Much of the decision-making literature, as well as that in international relations, has
focused on the constraints that limit what decision units can do, failing to take into account
the variety of ways in which those involved in policymaking can shape what happens.
Decision units are often active participants in the making of foreign policy.
Core Assumptions of the Decision
Units Approach
– (3)We are intent on developing a framework that facilitates scholars exploring
how decisions are made in all types of countries. To date models of foreign
policy decision making have had a distinctly U.S. flavor. As a result, the
models have not fared as well when extended to non-U.S. settings, particularly
to nondemocratic, transitional, and less developed polities. Indeed, “the U.S.
bias” in the decision-making literature has made it difficult to generalize to
other countries and has given researchers blind spots regarding how decisions
are made in governments and cultures not like the American. Before
explicating our approach further, let us examine in more detail the reasons for
our first two assumptions, in turn, noting how our desire to be comparative
has shaped the more integrated approach advocated here.
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Viewing the Models as Contingent
• Western democracies are viewed as having pluralistic processes while
authoritarian political systems are seen as hierarchical and highly
cohesive, and the policies in Third World polities are determined by
the predominant leader’s personal predispositions.
• In contrast, scholars with area expertise have shown the weaknesses in
this argument. For example, states with predominant leaders have at
times been governed more by coalitions of interests and group
dynamics than by the views and goals of a single actor, while highly
bureaucratized governments have seen a dominant leader centralize
authority and push a particular ideology or cause
Considering the Full Range of
Decision Processes
• What happens within a decision unit in the decision-making process can lead
to an array of different kinds of outcomes, indicating a need to move beyond
characterizing the outcomes of decisions as simply “political resultants.”
• In some cases there is a decision not to act or an inability to mount a new
policy initiative while in other cases the decision dynamics may propel one
party’s position to dominate, leading to more extreme action than most would
have desired.
• Somewhere between these two outcomes of deadlock and strong forceful
action are more complex situations where policies are “watered down” as a
result of internal bargaining and compromise or one party moderates its
position in order to let another “save face.”
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Considering the Full Range of
Decision Processes
• that democratic decision making is always more reactive and incoherent
than decision making in authoritarian regimes, or that the actions of
rogue states are reckless and out of touch with any kind of reality.
• An understanding of the conditions conducive to particular kinds of
processes and outcomes would not only improve our understanding of
how far countries’ foreign policy is likely to stray from the optimal, but
also presumably help scholars avoid the application of simplistic
stereotypes regarding what those states are likely to do.
A Decision Units Approach to Foreign Policy
Decision Making
• Building on the previous discussion, our proposed framework has
several components:
– (1) it views decision making as involving responding to foreign policy
How Decision Units Shape Foreign Policy problems and occasions for
decision;
– (2) it focuses on three types of authoritative decision units;
– (3) it defines the key factors that set into motion alternative decision
processes; and
– (4) it links these alternative decision processes to particularoutcomes.
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Inputs to the Decision Units Framework
• What triggers governments to make foreign policy decisions that, in turn, prod
powerful leaders, single groups, and coalitions into action?
• What is it about the political setting that leads one or the other of these different
types of decision units to assume authority for making a decision at any point in
time?
• How do we know which of the three types of decision units should be the focus
of our attention in studying a particular event?
• The answers to these questions form the inputs for the application of the decision
units approach.
• They start the framework in motion.
– Of interest is what precipitates a foreign policy decision and a particular decision
unit taking action. The inputs to the framework represent the stimuli from the
international and domestic environments to which the authoritative decision unit
is responding.
Inputs to the Decision Units Framework
• Problems trigger decisions.
– Discussions with policymakers and policy analysts suggest that they respond to
problems embedded in situations.
– Policymakers have goals and objectives they believe are important and want to
achieve during their administrations; agendas for foreign policy are formed around
these plans.
– But often as they begin to take action on such goals and objectives, they encounter
problems in their domestic and international environments that challenge what
they want to do.
– Their agendas can also be changed as they are forced by situations happening
elsewhere in the world to attend to issues not necessarily among their priorities.
– As a result, governments take action when policymakers perceive a problem in
foreign policy that they believe they can or need to influence.
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Inputs to the Decision Units Framework
– Thus, in exploring how foreign policy decisions are made, we start with a
problem that needs addressing.
– Problems are the trigger or reason for engaging the decision units framework.
– Not only is the foreign policy problem the initial stimulus or input into the
framework, attributes of problems provide us with helpful information in
identifying the authoritative decision unit and some ideas about the options
under review.
– We are studying who deals with problems once identified and how the
process they use affects the nature of the decision.
– When policymakers have recognized a foreign policy problem, we want to
determine who will be able to commit the resources of the government and
how that individual or those entities go about making a decision
Inputs to the Decision Units Framework
• Occasions for decision.
– Foreign policy problems arise episodically and often lead to a series of decisions. Policymakers
generally do not deal with a problem by making a single decision and then sit back to await a
response.
– Problems tend to get structured into a string of decisions that involve different parts of the
government’s foreign policy machinery.
• Consider as an illustration the British response to the Argentinean invasion of the Falkland Islands.
The response consisted of a series of decisions made in the British cabinet, defense ministry,
parliament, and foreign ministry. Different aspects of the problem were dealt with by policymakers
in these various institutions—general guidelines for policy were developed by the cabinet, troop
movements were defined by the defense ministry, cabinet policy was ratified by the Parliament, and
diplomatic moves in the United Nations and elsewhere were determined by the foreign
– Occasions for decision represent the instances in coping with a problem when the policymakers
are faced with making a choice. They are those points in the decision process when there is a felt
need by those involved to take action even if the action is the choice to do nothing or to search for
more information.
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Inputs to the Decision Units Framework
• The authoritative decision unit.
– At the apex of foreign policy decision making in all governments or ruling parties is a group
of actors—the authoritative decision unit—who, if they agree, have both the ability to
commit the resources of the government in foreign affairs and the power to prevent other
entities within the government from overtly reversing their position.
– The unit having this authority in a country may (and frequently does) vary with the nature of
the problem. For issues of vital importance to a country, the highest political authorities
often constitute the decision unit; there is a contraction of authority to those most
accountable for what happens. For less dramatic, more technical issues, the ultimate decision
unit generally varies depending on the type of problem the government is facing (military,
economic, diplomatic, environmental, scientific, and so on).
– In governments where policy normally involves multiple bureaucratic organizations, the
problem may be passed among different units—within one agency, across agencies, or
between interagency groups.
– The basic point here is that for most foreign policy problems and occasions for decision,
some person or collection of persons come together to authorize a decision and constitute
for that issue at that point in time the authoritative decision unit.
Determining the Authoritative Decision Unit
for an Occasion for Decision
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Determining the Authoritative Decision Unit
for an Occasion for Decision
• Conditions favoring a predominant leader.
– The decision unit for any occasion for decision is likely to be a predominant leader
if the regime has one individual in its leadership who is vested with the
authority—either by the constitution, law, or general practice—to commit or
withhold the resources of the government with regard to foreign policy problems.
– A monarchy is an illustration of this kind of predominant leader as is a
presidential political system in which the president is given authority over foreign
policy.
– The decision unit can also be a predominant leader if the foreign policy
machinery of the government is organized hierarchically with one person located
at the top of the hierarchy who is ultimately accountable for any decisions that are
made. As Harry Truman said about the American presidency, “The buck stops
here.” Moreover, if a single individual has control over the various forms of
coercion avail able in the society and, as a result, wields power over others, the
decision unit can be a predominant leader
Determining the Authoritative Decision Unit
for an Occasion for Decision
– Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes fall into this category and often have
predominant leaders dealing with foreign policy matters
– If we ascertain there is a predominant leader at this point in time, we need to
determine whether or not he or she chooses to exercise that authority.
– The literature on political leadership and foreign policy decision making
suggests there are at least six conditions when such leaders are likely to
exercise their powers
• These six conditions include certain types of situations that guarantee
involvement—high level diplomacy, crisis events—and particular aspects
of the leaders’ personalities that push them to want control over what
happens—interest, expertise, and techniques for managing information
and resolving disagreements.
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Decision Unit Dynamics
• Each kind of authoritative decision unit exists in one of several states that
determines the nature of the decision process and the decision calculus for
that unit.
• For each type of decision unit there is a particular “key contingency” that
permits us to differentiate configurations leading it to operate in
fundamentally different ways.
• For predominant leader decision units, the individual’s sensitivity to
information from the political context helps to define how much attention he
or she will pay to others’ points of view and to situational cues (
• The less sensitive the leader, the more important his or her leadership style
and beliefs become in determining what will happen; such leaders are usually
more interested in persuading others and
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Outputs of the Decision Units Approach
• There are two types of outputs from the decision units framework.
• First, there are the outcomes of the decision process itself.
– What happens when the decision unit configured in a particular way tries to cope with a
specific occasion for decision?
– We call what occurs when the decision unit engages in decision making “process outcomes.”
– In effect, process outcomes denote whose positions have counted in the final decision.
• Second, there are the actual foreign policy actions that are taken by the government. What is
the substantive nature of the decision?
– In other words, how would we describe what the government, as represented by the
particular authoritative decision unit, decided to do in substantive terms in response to an
occasion for decision?
– Thus, one of the outputs records what happened in the decision process; the other indicates
the content of the foreign policy decision that resulted from the choice process.
Decision Making in Small Groups
• Leaders and their advisors depend on government agencies, and the individuals working in
those organizations, for information and advice.
• In the end, however, foreign policy decisions are made closer to the tip of the iceberg: by
leaders and their small circle of advisors, or by groups of policy makers.
• It is in these small groups where policy makers meet face-to-face that decisions are
fashioned on the basis of the information and analysis provided by the various agencies and
departments
• Such groups may consist of only a few people or encompass an entire cabinet in a country
with parliamentary government.
• Some scholars even include groups as large as the entire parliament.
• Larger groups will require more rules and direction to function well than small ones, which
can remain more informal in their interactions.
• The important distinction is that the members of the group speak directly with each other
as a collectivity.
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Decision Making in Small Groups
• Here, we are primarily interested in groups that are no larger (and perhaps smaller) than a cabinet
government.
• A cabinet government is a group of ministers who jointly constitute the executive of a country.
• Officially, cabinets usually have collective responsibility, but the prime minister can become a dominant
figure within the cabinet rather than simply one of the collective.
• This is especially true in electoral systems that yield governments dominated by one political party,
rather than a coalition of several parties.
• Most popular are two images of the small group: one portrays the advisory group as a think tank,
where top advisors use the available, but incomplete, information to jointly construct a representation
of a foreign policy problem, determine its importance among other foreign policy problems, and debate
how best to respond to it.
• The basic assumption is that decision making in a team is “demonstrably superior to [single] individuals
when it comes to processing information about novel, complex, and unstructured problems.”
• In other words, groups or teams are especially good at making sense of the sort of ill-structured
problems that characterize
Colleagues and Competitors
• Advisors are both colleagues and competitors
• The collegial style, on the other hand, seeks to foster collegial interaction while
acknowledging the multiplicity of viewpoints.
• The formalistic style pushes competition and conflict away from the tip of the policy
making iceberg.
• The thread than runs through each of these three descriptions of government decision
making is that individual and organizational factors influence problem representations and
decisions.
• More importantly, you have probably noticed that the policy making process is rife with
opportunities to advance the cause of the (perceived) national interest, one’s organization,
one’s superior(s), or oneself. A policy maker can act collegially and loyally to achieve her or
his ends or can choose to subvert the career of a superior or a colleague. The small advisory
groups at the apex of government are no different from the government as a whole: the
members of such groups can interact in a variety of ways to serve a mixture of interests.
Their interactions can be summarized into four main interaction patterns: bargaining,
concurrence, deadlock, and persuasion.
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Political Games, a.k.a. Strategies of Influence
• Much more can be said about small group interactions, as each of the policy makers involved is likely to
be engaged in efforts to manipulate the decision process to increase the chances that the decision she or
he favors will dominate or significantly influence the decision.
• Political manipulation is defined
– as the effort(s) made by one or more individuals to influence a situation in which a group is
making a decision in a way that increases the chances that the outcome will reflect their
preferences.
• There are a variety of strategies a decision maker can employ to improve her or his chances to
significantly influence the decision.
– Such strategies can be divided into three groups:
• (1) efforts to influence the composition of the decision making group so as to reduce the impact of
opposing viewpoints
• (2) efforts to influence the beginning stages of the decision process, such as the framing of an issue
or perceptions of its relative importance among the various issues the government confronts
simultaneously
• (3) efforts to manipulate the dynamics of interpersonal interaction within the group
Political Games, a.k.a. Strategies of Influence
• 1. Group composition
– Policy makers sometimes try to influence the composition of the decision making group.
– This can be achieved either by excluding a colleague whose opinions contradict one’s own or
by trying to include additional members into the group who will support one’s position.
– Exclusion can be achieved formally only by policy makers who have the clout to play a role
in determining membership in a particular decision making group, but it is also possible to
schedule meetings at a time when the individual with the opposing opinion happens to be
out of town or to hold informal meetings with select group members apart from the
officially scheduled ones.
– Including additional members into the group can sometimes be justified on the basis of their
expertise and can be useful in providing additional support for one’s position. It is also
possible to strengthen the credibility of a viewpoint by claiming to speak for one’s superior.
– Doing so not only includes that person’s opinion into the debate, it serves to lend greater
weight to one’s own point of view.
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Political Games, a.k.a. Strategies of Influence
• 2. Framing.
– Efforts to influence how an issue is framed are especially effective at
the early stages of a decision making process.
– Individual decision makers are likely to frame problems each in their
own distinctive way.
– Once they join one another in a group to deliberate how to respond to
this problem, they will each operate on the basis of this individual
problem representation, unless the group first deliberates the contours
of the problem before moving on to outlining and discussing options.
– By influencing the group’s collective problem representation, an
individual policy maker can manipulate which options will then have a
greater likelihood of being chosen.
Political Games, a.k.a. Strategies of Influence
• 3. Interpersonal relationships.
– In addition to manipulating who participates and how the problem is framed,
policy makers are likely to use a variety of tactics to influence how they and
others in the group are perceived
– In addition to bolstering one’s position by claiming to speak for a superior, a
policy maker might seek to discredit the expertise of their opponent.
– Another tactic is to get others to agree in stages.
– Small advisory groups, with their strategies and political games, are especially
common in political systems with a strong executive, characterized by one
individual who has the final responsibility for the decisions, such as is
common in presidential systems.
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Coalitions: Governing Together
• Political systems in which the ultimate responsibility rests with a single chief executive, such as a president,
advisory groups are not ultimately responsible for the final decision.
– Rather, it is the chief executive who bears that responsibility.
• In parliamentary cabinet government, the heads of the various departments share collective responsibility for
policy decisions, at least in a formal or legal sense.
– The prime minister is in that case considered to be the primus inter pares (Latin for “first among equals”),
meaning that the prime minister holds the special position of head of the collective but is not superior in rank to
her or his colleagues.
– In practice, though, the prime minister often carries greater weight in decision making than the other members of
the group.
• This is especially true in parliamentary systems where a single party dominates the government, such as is
usually the case in Britain.
• There, prime ministers like Margaret Thatcher and, more recently, Tony Blair acted as the central figures of
their governments, leading to the “presidentialization” of cabinet government.
• When the cabinet is created out of a coalition of political parties rather than one dominant party, the
situation is different.
• The exact distribution of power among the coalition partners, or the parties that have agreed to form a
government together, is the subject of negotiations between those parties.
• Before signing a coalition agreement, the document that governs the cooperation between the coalition
partners as they govern together, representatives of these parties negotiate not only the number of
ministers each party will provide but also which ministries each will hold, as well as the general outlines of
the policy agenda that will guide their government.
Perception, Cognition
Rationality, Social Inference
Beliefs, Personality, Leadership
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• Under these ‘globalized conditions’ foreign policy is no longer
understood as an exclusive practice of nation-states; as Steve Smith,
• Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne (2008, 2)
– ‘it is perfectly possible to speak of companies, regional governments,
and non-state actors having foreign policies’.
The Quest to Understand Leaders
• We must begin with the assumption that the public persona and private
individual are not synonymous.
• leaders’ personalities?
– Studies of leaders frequently borrow concepts from psychology,
which has devised many instruments for studying individuals and their
motivations, their approaches to problem solving and decision
making, and their basic view of the world around them.
– Psychologists have arrived at their notions about personality through
carefully constructed experiments that have provided insights into the
general tendencies of human behavior.
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The Quest to Understand Leaders
• There is, however, an important difference between the two disciplines:
– psychologists are interested in general knowledge about human behavior,
– whereas foreign policy analysts are interested in evaluating specific
individuals—domestic and foreign leaders
• A second important difference is that psychologists, whether they are
engaged in research or counsel individuals, have direct access to their
subjects,
• whereas foreign policy analysts usually do not: foreign policy decision makers
are unlikely to make themselves available for such testing.
• This means that the study of leaders must rely on indirect methods.
The Quest to Understand Leaders
• Foreign policy analysts, who are interested in understanding how
leaders view the world, what motivates them, and how they make
decisions, have no choice but to devise ways to read between the lines
of the public persona to find hints of the individual behind the image
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Rationality
• Realism, with its emphasis on rational choice, was the dominant grand
• theory of international relations throughout much of the twentieth
century.
• Its dominance was at its peak at the close of World War II and the
• start of the Cold War.
Identity
• Hans Morgenthau for instance argued that ‘the kind of interest
determiningpolitical action in a particular period of history depends
upon thepolitical and cultural context within which foreign policy is
formulated’ (Morgenthau, 1967, 4).
• ‘Power’ in an international anarchical system remains the major driving
force of social relationships
• The identity of an actor is the result first and foremost of systemic
pressures, obeying the essential nature of actors as rational ‘power
maximizers’
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Identity
• ‘Power’ in an international anarchical system remains the major driving
force of social relationships
• Reinhold Niebuhr held that the individual is capable of moral
behaviour, but in an ‘immoral society’ is likely to lose his (‘moral’)
identity and become part of an anonymous mass striving for power-
maximization.
• In this view, the identity of an actor is the result first and foremost of
systemic pressures, obeying the essential nature of actors as rational
‘power maximizers’
Identity
• Scholars in foreign policy analysis have long recognized that systems of
meaning-making such as beliefs have operated at the level of individual
policymakers
• As outlined in Social Categorization Theory, self-categorization refers to the
process by which individuals partition the world into ingroups and outgroups
• Cognitively, context-specific prototypes define the group, prescribing the
attitudes, norms, feelings, and behaviors of ingroup and intergroup relations:
“Social categorization of the self … actually transform[s] self-conception and
assimilate[s] all aspects of one’s attitudes, feelings, and behaviors to the
ingroup prototype; it changes what people think, feel, and do”
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Identity
• Importantly, the process of categorization is contingent; multiple
collective identities exist within a population at any given time, and the
effects of categorization depend on activation of a specific identity.
That is, different categorizations with different effects occur
depending on whether a ‘Western’ or a ‘British’ or a ‘democratic’
identity is activated.
Identity
• The first explicit and systematic analysis of culture and identity in
international relations was undertaken by some of the founding
generation of foreign policy analysts focusing on ‘role conceptions’
and ‘civic’ or ‘political culture’ in the late 60s and 70s, highly influenced
by the behavioural thrust of the discipline at that time
• In this line of research, the analysis of a specific national ‘culture’ or
‘role conception’ was supposed to shed light on normative
predispositions of actors to conduct a certain type of foreign policy
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Identity
• Studies in this tradition aimed to show that differences in culture, role
or ‘national character’ could function as an indicator (and/or
predictor) of distinct foreign policy behaviour.
• These kind of studies fell out of fashion rapidly due to uncomfortable
connotations and the excesses of ‘national character research’ in the
1930s
Identity in post-Cold War IR and FPA
• As a comprehensive study on the use of identity in IR has shown, the
number of articles in IR journals dealing with this concept skyrocketed
around 1993 and experienced yet another enormous jump around
1995
• the concept of identity began to attract a great deal of attention in the
context of post-Cold War IR, since the ‘catalytic shock’ of the end of
the Cold War – and the apparent inability of IR theory to predict this
profound change
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Identity in post-Cold War IR and FPA
• In this context, ‘ideational’ concepts like identity received a warm
reception because they moved the focus of attention away from
classical categories such as ‘power’, which in the appraisal of many IR
scholars had failed to explain and predict the dynamics of
contemporary international relations.
• On the other hand, phenomena like globalization, European
integration and the re-emergence of nationalism and separatist
movements in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s further contributed
to a serious questioning of the validity of existent perspectives
What We Use Identity For
• question of how we define identity A possible (and frequent) way to
do this is by distinguishing between constructivist and
positivist/essentialist accounts of identity.
• three major theoretical traditions and their typical conceptualizations
of identity in IR and FPA – sociological institutionalism,
poststructuralism/discourse analysis, psychoanalysis and social
psychology
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Identity
• Identity in IR is represented by those studies that advert to sociological
institutionalism.
• Identity in this tradition is usually conceived of as being part of a culturalinstitutional
structure within which actors define their interests and options
for action. In opposition to rationalist approaches, these kind of studies aim
to explain the relevance of ‘ideational’ factors vis-ávis ‘material’ factors, often
with identity as a kind of textbook example for the former. In this tradition
we find studies such as The Culture of National Security edited by Peter
Katzenstein (1996), or the seminal book on Ideas and Foreign Policy edited by
Robert Keohane and Judith Goldstein (1993). Also, particularly the (early)
work of Alexander
• Wendt on collective identity formation can be characterized as inclined to
sociological institutionalism, given that Wendt – in an effort to explore a
potential ‘constructivist contribution to strong liberalism’
Identity
• Wendt designed a relatively stable ‘state identity’ at the systemic level, resulting in a ‘weak or essentialist’
constructivist approach to world politics
• In contrast to the ‘weak or essentialist’ constructivist position mentioned above, authors in the tradition of
poststructuralism and/or (critical) discourse analysis usually advance a decidedly ‘strong’ constructivist
position, stressing the constructed and contested nature of cultural meaning and social phenomena.
• Based on a post-positivistic epistemology, approaches in this tradition commonly draw theoretical substance
from diverse poststructuralist authors such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Ernesto Laclau and
Chantal Mouffe.
• However, at the heart of the poststructuralist conception of identity lies the constitution of difference –
generally via the drawing of inside/outside boundaries and the practice of ‘othering’ – a constitutive and
therefore fundamental practice of foreign policy, often related to the production/construction of threat and
danger.
• Among the most prominent approaches in this perspective we find David Campbell’s Writing Security (1992), in
which he emphasizes the close link between border maintenance and identity formation, and the work of Iver
Neumann regarding the practice of ‘othering’ in relation to the formation of the self. Also, James Der Derian’s
genealogical reconstruction of diplomacy as a practice of ‘mediating estrangement’ among alienated societies is
commonly associated with this perspective
• In recent FPA discourse, however, the issues of identity construction after 9/11 and related securitization
practices have been a particular focus of attention frequently tackled with a poststructuralist perspective
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Identity
• Finally, another major theoretical tradition of identity research in IR and FPA is represented
by those studies that adhere to social psychology and/or psychoanalysis.
• Drawing on classical work by Sigmund Freud, the main premise of studies inspired by
psychoanalysis is that individuals have a basic need for survival and identity preservation,
triggered by the perception of an endangered Eros, which is at the heart of Freudian
‘identification theory’.
• Translated into the context of IR,William Bloom for instance emphasizes the tendency – or
‘psychobiological imperative’ – of individuals and groups to act jointly in an identityenhancing
(or identity-preserving) manner every time they perceive the possibility or
necessity to do so, given that identity is closely related to notions of self-esteem (or
humiliation).
• The resulting ‘national identity dynamic’ represents in Bloom’s view the major driving force
for collective action and potentially conflict-prone foreign policy.
Rationality
• We can assume that leaders whose rationality may be questioned, but
there are far fewer such individuals than those who are commonly
labeled irrational.
• Hence, when seeking to explain foreign policy decisions, it is more
fruitful to start with the assumption that the leaders who made these
puzzling decisions were rational human beings trying their best to
make “good” foreign policy decisions for their countries.
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Rationality
• Once we make that assumption, however, we must also begin to
ponder what motivates these leaders, what they understand about the
situations they face, and what factors made their decisions turn out to
be “bad” ones
• Rationality: the demand that the means—or the policy choices—are
logically connected to the ends—or the leader’s goals.
• Good decisions. All too often, foreign policy decisions are judged to
be good or bad in hindsight. Such evaluations are frequently based on
the knowledge that the decision led to a desirable or disastrous
outcome
Problems with Rationality
• First, such process-oriented judgments are likely to overestimate the
degree to which leaders make reasonable decisions.
• When leaders engage in sound analysis on the basis of a very narrow
and skewed perception of the world or on the basis of obviously
flawed information, a process-oriented evaluation would lead us to
judge the decision as a reasonable one. After all, the proper process
was followed.
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Problems with Rationality
• The second disadvantage of judging foreign policy decisions by the
process used to achieve them is a practical problem:
– it can be quite difficult to figure out whether a foreign policy decision
was based on sound analysis and careful thought.
– Frequently, relevant information may be classified or the necessary
records may not exist.
– Governments and countries differ in their record keeping.
– They may also have different policies regarding declassification of the
documents that do exist and making them available to researchers.
Rationality
• Foreign policy decisions are rational if they are logical in light of the
decision maker’s goals.
• First, assessments of foreign policy decisions frequently neglect to
make a distinction between individual decision makers and the
government as a collectivity of many persons. Second, rationality has
been used both normatively and empirically.
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Cognition
• Scholars have long studied great leaders as well as notorious ones in
order to understand their motivations, thoughts, and actions.
• But, in the post–World War II era, political biographies of leaders were
regarded by mainstream political scientists as too unscientific for the
nascent field of foreign policy analysis.
• The study of individuals needed to take on the same rigor as the
competing study of rational decision making.
• Cognition
– “the mental process or faculty of knowing, including aspects such as
awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.”
Cognition
• The move toward incorporating a more thorough, scientific investigation of
individuals into the study of foreign policy took off in the 1950s.
• In the aftermath of World War II, behavioral scientists and psychologists had
begun to examine issues such as whether aggression was inherent to humans
or a learned (socialized) behavior that could be unlearned.
• Kenneth Waltz and Jerel Rosati—writing in different time periods and with
very different orientations—credit the peace researchers of the 1950s with
bringing the insights of psychology into the study of foreign policy.
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Cognition
• The motivation of peace researchers was simple: if humans learn to
make war, then they can learn to make peace. If, instead, aggression is
part of human nature, perhaps aggression could be channeled into
nonviolent pursuits.
• Important early contributor to the study of cognition is Irving Janis.
Janis proposes that that in every situation there is a “decisional
conflict” that distorts decision making. A decisional conflict refers to
the situation in which opposing tendencies within an individual
interfere with what realists would call “rational” decision making
Self-censorhip
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Image of an Enemy
• Threats are socially constructed through a security speech act—the
securitizing move—in which a securitizing actor claims some
phenomenon or actor presents an existential threat to a referent. A
successful securitizing move allows political actors to ‘break free’ of
the rules that govern normal political behavior and shift the issue into
an authoritarian political framework where deliberation is suspended,
power is centralized, and political rights are deemphasized
Belief Sets and Cognitive Structure
• Belief set is a more or less integrated set of images held by an
individual about a particular universe.
• This set of images acts as a screen, letting in information that fits the
belief set and keeping out information that does not.
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Belief Set is the Enemy Image
• Images of other international actors can be categorized according to
stereotyped views of the motivations of the subject and the behaviors
that result from such.
• The “enemy” is imagined as evil by nature, with unlimited potential for
committing evil acts. The enemy is also imagined as a strategic thinker
and consummate chess master—establishing and carrying out a plan
bent on destroying its enemies and their way of life
Picture of the Enemy
• When a foreign policy maker holds a fairly strong enemy image of an
opponent, only those images that confirm the inherently evil and
cunning nature of the opponent are stored and remembered.
• Images that suggest a more complicated nature in the opponent, or
that suggest less capability by the opponent are screened out.
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Picture of the Enemy
• The inability of the U.S. leadership and intelligence community to predict the
sudden and terminal collapse of the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union can
be attributed to a firmly entrenched enemy image that failed to take note of
signs of a rapidly deteriorating Soviet empire and a differently oriented Soviet
leadership under Gorbachev.
• In the present era, George W. Bush’s active use of the idea that the enemy is
always plotting and planning to attack innocent people derives from this same
basic assumption that the evil enemy may be more organized and proactive
than the good guys.
• Enemy images may do more than cause an actor to miss signs of change or
weakness in the enemy; the presence of strong enemy images may sustain
international conflict over time, a prophetic conclusion drawn by Ole Holsti
in the 1960s regarding American decision makers’ images of Soviet leaders
Picture of the Enemy
• A belief set is a fairly simple idea the elements of which can often be
depicted in simple metaphors
• When a leader is described as a “dove,” the image of a dove of peace
is evoked, suggesting the leader is inclined to interpret international
events in an optimistic way and to act cooperatively with others.
• When a leader is described as a “hawk,” the image of a bird of prey is
evoked.
• Predator birds must be constantly alert to threats and opportunities in
the environment, and they never turn away from the use of force
when such use can further self-interest.
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Cognitive Consistency
• This is the idea that the images contained in a belief set must be
logically connected and consistent.
• Cognitive theorists claim that when an individual holds conflicting be
liefs, the individual experiences an anxiety known as cognitive
dissonance.
• Individuals strive to avoid this dissonance and the anxiety it produces
by actively managing the information they encounter and store in their
belief sets.
Cognitive Consistency
• beliefs that are firmly held and supported by one’s society and culture
are more rigid and unlikely to change.
• Matthew Hirshberg provides a demonstration of the rigidity of
preexisting beliefs and the reconstruction of information to make it
resemble preexisting beliefs.
• Hirshberg presented fictional news stories to three groups of college
students to test two hypotheses
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Hirshberg’s first hypothesis
• His first hypothesis was that “the stereotype of a prodemocratic America serves
to maintain its own cultural dominance by filtering out information that does not
fit it, making it difficult for Americans to test the validity of their
preconceptions.”
• The fictional news accounts portrayed the United States intervening in three
different ways:
– (1) on the side of a democratic government besieged by rebels,
– (2) on the side of an unspecified type of government besieged by communist
rebels, and
– (3) on the side of an unspecified type of government besieged by democratic
rebels.
• When asked to recall the events depicted in the particular story read, most
students recalled that the United States had intervened in support of democracy.
• The students’ strongly held belief that the United States always supported
democracy and freedom caused them to re-create the information in the news
account to fit what they believed.
Hirshberg’s Second Hypothesis
• Hirshberg tested a second hypothesis on what is called attribution bias.
• An attribution bias or error is triggered by information that is inconsistent with
preexisting beliefs and cannot be re-created to fit those beliefs.
• The attribution bias involves both the enemy image discussed above and another
perceptual move called the mirror image.
– The starting belief is that we are a people who are inherently good and well-
intentioned.
– Our opponent, on the other hand, is evil and has malevolent intentions—the
opposite or mirror image of us.
• In an attribution error, the individual goes a step further in order to explain
behavior, especially behavior that does not fit one’s beliefs about one’s own
country as good and well-intentioned.
• When our evil opponent does bad things—like using military force or coercing
another country into a one-sided trade arrangement—it is because such bad
behavior is in our opponent’s nature.
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Hirshberg’s Second Hypothesis
• Hirshberg’s second hypothesis was tested
– with fictional news accounts that either depicted the United States dropping
“tons of incendiary bombs,” causing “panic” and “horror” among villagers,
– or depicted it dropping “tons of relief supplies,” causing “joy” and “glee”
among villagers.
• After having his subjects read one version of the fictional accounts, he had
them answer questionnaires on the “nature of the United States” and why it
acted as reported.
• Hirshberg found that 70 percent of those reading about the dropping of
relief supplies agreed that it was American nature to do so (an internal
attribution bias).
• However, he did not find significant statistical support for the external
attribution bias that the United States dropped bombs because it was forced
to do so by external events.
Hirshberg’s research
• The public surveyed by Hirshberg may have been less likely to
demonstrate an external attribution bias than U.S. national leaders.
• Consider them Bush 2 administration explanations for why the United
States went to war in Iraq.
• In May 2004, the president said:
– We did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it.
We must keep our focus. We must do our duty. History is moving, and
it will tend toward hope, or tend toward tragedy. Our terrorist enemies
have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder. . .
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Hirshberg’s research
• In a similar address in November 2005, the president explained,
– “We didn’t ask for this global struggle, but we’re answering history’s
call with confidence, and with a comprehensive strategy.”
• And in January 2006, the president said
– “You know, no President ever wants to be President during war. But
this war came to us, not as a result of actions we took, it came to us as
a result of actions an enemy took on September the 11th, 2001.”
Operational Code
• When a leader makes use of an analogy, it is possible to make a safe
guess about the kind of behaviors that follow.
• Once a leader identifies an opponent as another “Saddam Hussain”
and therefore the past lessons must apply, we can safely predict that
the leader thinks that some kind of forceful reply to the new Hussain
is in order.
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Operational Code
• The operational code as a methodology seeks to describe a leader’s
fundamental beliefs, which provide norms, standards, and guidelines
for decision making.
• The operational code does not tell us what, specifically, a decision
maker will decide. Instead, it provides insight into the decision maker’s
perceptions and evaluations of the world, and estimates of how he
Operational Code
• Alexander George is the scholar who brought the discussion of
operational codes to the forefront in foreign policy study in the late
1960s.
• George defines the operational code as a “political leader’s beliefs
about the nature of politics and political conflict, his views regarding
the extent to which historical developments can be shaped, and his
notions of correct strategy and tactics.
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Operational Code
• Delineating a leader’s operational code involves a two-step process, as
described by Stephen Walker and colleagues:
– First, what are the leader’s philosophical beliefs about the dynamics of world
politics? Is the leader’s image of the political universe a diagnosis marked by
cooperation or conflict? What are the prospects for the realization of
fundamental political values? What is the predictability of others, the degree
of control over historical development and the role of chance?
– Second, what are the leader’s instrumental beliefs that indicate choice and
shift propensities in management of conflict? What is the leader’s general
approach to strategy and tactics and the utility of different means? How does
the leader calculate, control, and manage the risks and timing of political
action
Operational Code
• Operational code studies typically depend on an examination of the writings
and statements of a leader from which philosophical beliefs can be extracted.
• Scott Crichlow explains that Although it may be altered (e.g., by learning) or
modified in specific situational environments, the operational code of a leader
rests on a core set of predispositions, such that the taking of actions that
contradict it is by definition out of the norm. Therefore, it is expected that
such patterns of preferences in a leader’s political statements are indeed
largely accurate illustrations of his or her basic predispositions regarding the
nature and conduct of politics
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Case Study on China and Xi Jinping
• He Kai and Feng Huiyun
– Xi Jinping’s Operational Code Beliefs and China’s Foreign Policy. The Chinese
Journal of International Politics, Vol. 6, 2013, 209–231.
– Question: will Xi change China’s foreign policy orientation
– Given China’s ‘assertive turn’ of diplomacy since 2009, a more concrete question
is that of whether or not Xi will maintain this assertive orientation or steer China’s
foreign policy in a more cooperative direction
– Practically speaking, Xi’s succession of power signifies a new generation of
leadership in China. Barring the occurrence of a critical event, Xi will be in power
for the next 10 years. Given China’s continuous ascent on the world stage, the
period will both define China’s future and be critical to regional security and world
peace. In other words, in the next decade Xi will determine China’s future and also
shape world politics.
Case Study on China and Xi Jinping
• general argument is that leaders’ belief systems are key to understanding both
the nature and the policy of states in the international system. On the one
hand, a leader’s belief system reflects what kind of leader he or she is, and
relates directly to what type of state the country will be within the
international system. If a state leader harbours revisionist ambitions and
perceives the nature of the political universe as conflictual, this state is likely
sooner or later to become a revisionist power within the system. If a state
leader has a limited securityoriented goal and holds a cooperative worldview,
the state is more likely to be a status quo power within the system. Leaders’
beliefs moreover dictate the policy behaviours of states, as the different policy
choices of states are the means whereby leaders achieve their strategic goals
within the international system.
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Operational Code
• Based on Nathan Leites’ prototypical studies of the Bolshevik
operational code of the 1950s, Alexander George formalized the
methodology of operational code analysis by suggesting 10 questions
as a tool for gauging and analysing any individual’s philosophical and
instrumental belief system
Operational Code
• Philosophical Beliefs
– P-1 What is the ‘essential’ nature of political life? Is the political universe
essentially one of harmony or conflict? What is the fundamental character of
one’s political opponents?
– P-2 What are the prospects for the eventual realization of one’s fundamental
values and aspirations? Can one be optimistic, or must one be pessimistic on this
score; and in what respects the one and/or the other?
– P-3 Is the political future predictable? In what sense and to what extent?
– P-4 How much ‘control’ or ‘mastery’ can one have over historical development?
What is one’s role in ‘moving’ and ‘shaping’ history in the desired direction?
– P-5- What is the role of ‘chance’ in human affairs and in historical development?
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Operational Code
• Instrumental Beliefs
– I-1 What is the best approach for selecting goals or objectives for
political action?
– I-2 How are the goals of action pursued most effectively?
– I-3 How are the risks of political action calculated, controlled and
accepted?
– I-4 What is the best ‘timing’ of action to advance one’s interests?
– I-5 What is the utility and role of different means for advancing one’s
interests?
Operational Code
• Ole Holsti further constructed six types of operational codes for
leaders.
• Stephen Walker later revised Holsti’s typology into four types of belief
systems with three key beliefs:
– (P-1) nature of the political universe;
– (I-1) strategic approach to goals; and
– (P-4) ability to control historical development.
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Operational Code and Content Analysis
• VICS is a computer software program used for content analysis based
on verbs in a leader’s speeches. The verbs are coded, using a
dictionary, to construct indices of a leader’s view of the political
universe and strategy preferences according to George’s 10 questions
about philosophical and instrumental beliefs. Many scholars have
applied operational code analysis and the VICS indices to analyse
foreign polic decision-making by examining decision-makers’ belief
systems
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Operational Code of Xi
• They have collected both Hu and Xi’s public speeches and statements on foreign
affairs. Owing to their differing positions of power in the CCP and the PRC
government, Hu’s speeches and statements span the decade from 2002 to 2012,
while Xi’s data collection covers the years 2007 to 2012.
• Hu became Vice President of the PRC, and set out on his succession of Jiang
Zemin, in 1998. Xi was selected to enter the Standing Committee of the Politburo
in 2007, and appointed Vice President in 2008.
• The major sources of these speeches and statements are the LexisNexis news
database and the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry website. All speeches and
public statements are published in English from official government sources. Data
include 90 of Hu’s speeches and statements and 18 of Xi’s. Xi’s speeches were
mainly delivered in his capacity as Vice President of the PRC from 2009 to 2011.
• The sample size of his speeches is consequently smaller than Hu’s, because as
president during the first decade of the 2000s Hu had more opportunities to
deliver foreign affairs-related statements and speeches.
Operational Code of Xi
• Purposeful rather than random sampling was applied to selecting from their
available speeches, which usually exceeded one thousand words, and to analysing
the aggregated sample frame. We have run Profiler Plus to code the VICS indices
in Hu and Xi’s speeches and to quantify the key operational code beliefs, P-1, I-1,
and P-4, of Hu and Xi.
• The following are the four sets of questions we try to answer:
– (i) Will Xi have a different P-1 belief from Hu? Who has a more cooperative
worldview?
– (ii) Will Xi have a different I-1 belief from Hu? Who is more likely to adopt an
assertive policy to achieve his strategic goal?
– (iii) Will Xi have a different P-4 belief from Hu? Who is the stronger and more
decisive leader in exerting control over historical development?
– (iv) How did Hu’s belief systems change over time during his tenure? Could we
rely on Hu’s belief change trajectory to make inferences with regards to Xi’s future
belief changes?
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Conclusion of the OC research of Xi
• We contend that leaders’ beliefs, especially their worldviews (P-1 beliefs) and
approaches to strategy (I-1 beliefs) not only shape the nature of a state as a
revisionist versus a status quo power in the system, they also dictate the policy
choices of the state in pursuing strategic goals, either assertively or moderately
• The statistical results show that Xi has a belief system similar to Hu. This signifies
that Xi’s foreign policy will not depart significantly from Hu’s.
• However, Xi seems less optimistic about the nature of the political universe, and
his strategy to achieve goals tends to be more assertive in comparison with Hu’s.
• Since China’s diplomacy is widely perceived as more assertive since 2009, the
tough international environment may have contributed to Xi’s less optimistic
worldview and more assertive strategic orientation
Conclusion of the OC research of Xi
• It suggests that even though Chinese leaders hold a cooperative and optimistic worldview about the
political universe and intend to maintain the status quo, they will behave assertively when facing serious
external challenges.
• This is exactly what Hu did before suggests he left office. Our research that Xi will do the same,
probably in an even more assertive direction.
• A more detailed analysis of Xi’s beliefs with regards to the utility of different means shows that Xi
prefers cooperative means, such as appeals, to conflictual ones, i.e. punishments, to achieve his goals, in
comparison with Hu. This spells both good and bad news for policy makers in Washington and other
capitals.
• The good news is that they need not worry about China’s revisionist ambitions, because Xi is still
positive and optimistic about the existing international system and the political universe, which he will
have no intention of overturning.
• In addition, he is more likely than Hu to use cooperative means to achieve his goals. The bad news is
that they may need to review or revise their existing policy towards China, should they have adopted or
intend to adopt one of containment. Although Xi prefers cooperative to conflictual means to get things
done, a severe external environment may force him to pursue a more assertive policy. In other words, a
rising China may not be a threat. But an angry China indeed will be.
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Personality
• When operational code scholars propose that a leader’s core set of
philosophical beliefs make it unlikely that the leader will act in ways
inconsistent with this norm, these scholars link operational code to
cognitive studies.
• When operational code scholars explain that they ultimately are
establishing a leader’s fundamental behavioral predisposition they link
operational code to the study of personality and affect
Personality
• personality as
– (1) The quality or condition of being a person.
– (2) The totality of qualities and traits, as of character or behavior, that
are peculiar to a specific person.
– (3) The pattern of collective character, behavioral, temperamental,
emotional and mental traits of a person.”
• The study of personality in foreign policy analysis involves the study
of affect—or emotions or feelings—that represent enduring character
traits
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Personality
• Margaret Hermann is the pioneering scholar in this study.
• Hermann’s research reveals that six personality traits are related to
specific foreign policy behaviors.
• These traits are:
– the need for power,
– the need for affiliation,
– the level of cognitive complexity,
– the degree of trust in others,
– nationalism,
– and the belief that one has some control over events.
Personality
• In the realm of foreign policy analysis, the impact of personality on decisionmaking
is perhaps the most contentious.
– The role of personality in foreign policy encompasses cognitive processes,
background, personal characteristics, motives, and beliefs, and assumes that
decision making is the result of individual ‘human agency’; that is, that
ultimately, it is individuals who make decisions, not states, which Jensen
(1982:13) describes as a ‘legal abstraction’
– Personality can be important in adding to our understanding of foreign policy
behaviour, but its relevance is dependent upon the constraints of the
international system as well as domestic political structures. There are several
models of foreign policy making that downplay the role of individuals in
decision-making, including Allison’s Bureaucratic Politics model (1971) and
those that stress the phenomenon of ‘groupthink’ (Janis, 1972).
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Personality
• The first important point to note when considering the impact of personality on foreign
policy is that there are certain systemic conditions under which personality and individual
idiosyncrasies are unable to make a significant impact upon decision-making.
• politics being heavily autocratic, monarchical and dictatorial, (in other words, unimpeded by
bureaucracy), the Middle East as a region could be said to provide optimum conditions for
the expression of personality in foreign policy decision-making. In such regimes, the leader
tends to operate according to personal whims, unconstrained by bureaucracy or opposition
forces. This condition lends itself neatly to the Middle East, and leaders such as King Fahd
of Saudi Arabia or the Sultans of the Gulf States. Hermann refers to this type of leader as
‘predominant’ (Hermann, 2001:84).
– It is much more cumbersome to attempt to apply models of bureaucratic politics to regimes
such as these in which one decision maker is ultimately responsible for every foreign policy
decision in that state. However, one should not assume that personality is the sole
influencing factor in such regimes
Society, Culture and Roles
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What is culture ?
• Lets Discuss  what is Culture ?
• Compare and contrast different Culture
Culture
• Who are we ?
• What do ‘we’ do ?
• Who are they ?
• What should we do ?
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Culture
• We have conceptualizations of other nations and their peoples
• Often these are very different from how the people of that other
nation conceive themselves
• Breuning
– The noblest elements of nation’s “heroic history”
The Study of Culture in IR
• During the Cold War, it was possible to overlook the culture and
national identity
– Bipolar world rivalry
• Samuel Huntington
– Clash of Civilization
– Confucian-Islamix axis will oppose the west
• Lucian Pye
– Culture quickly becomes the explanation of last resorts
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Defining Culture
• In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of
164 definitions of "culture“
Defining Culture
• Geert Hofstede
– a widely known Dutch researcher of culture, has defined culture as "the
collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one
group or category of people from another." (1991, p.5).
– Software of the mind
• Herskovits
– Human-made part of the environment
• Skinner
– Culture is set of schedules of reinforcements
• Millenium (journal)
– Culture is any interpersonally shared systems of meanings, perceptions, and
values
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Defining Culture
• LeVine 1973
– “I use the term culture to mean an organized body of rules concerning the
ways in which individuals in a population should communicate with another,
think about themselves and their environment, and behave toward one
another and towards objects in their environment”
• Geertz 1973
– “Culture is an historically transmitted pattern of meaning embodied in
symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by
means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge
about and attitudes towards life”
Defining Culture
• Martin Wight’s
– underpins an English School hypothesis about the relationship
between patterns of culture, understood as civilizational areas, on the
one hand, and international society, understood as a society of states,
on the other.
– The most direct form of the hypothesis is that a shared culture is a
precondition for the formation of a society of states.
– A second hypothesis can be inferred: namely, that a society of states
lacking a shared culture because it has expanded beyond its
original base will be unstable.
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Culture
• Culture is a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic
forms by means of which people communicate, perpetuate and
develop their knowledge about and attitudes to life.
• Culture can affect behaviour in the way that people share values and
their view of the world.
• The assumption is that if they share beliefs and values based on a
specific culture, they are more likely to cooperate.
• This “Culture” of course consists of shared assumptions which shape
and influence the relationship of individuals, groups in the society.
• Although there can be multiple cultures within a society (state or
community), usually there is a dominant culture
Culture
• Colin Gray states that culture is important when it comes to
understanding strategies, because it directs attention to the customs,
beliefs and behaviours that continue and it is relatively deeply inherited
rather than temporary or shallow.
• Colin S. Gray, there are three orders of culture and strategy – roots,
forms and manifestations.
• The roots are what people believe to be true about geography and
history. These factors shape their behaviour and they matter
significantly when it comes to decision making.
• These aspects also matter when it comes to a group, community and
state. Countries make their own history and interpret their own
historical experience.
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Culture
• History and experience go hand in hand with culture and play an important
part in identity-making. The historical experiences of the state and citizens
help to shape collective opinions and visions of the world order. For every
state, the interpretation of historical factors will differ. It depends, for
example, if the state initiates attacks or defends itself, or if it wins or loses a
conflict. Another important factor is how the people interpret the conflict
itself.
• Another important aspect in strategic culture is behaviour. A state’s
behaviour is shaped based on its historical experiences. These experiences
shape how the state will react in a given situation in the international system.
States have different strategic preferences that are rooted in experiences of
the state and are influenced to some degree by philosophical, political,
cultural and cognitive characteristics of the state’s elite
Theories of International relations
• International relations theory provides various perspectives on how
foreign cultural relations can be perceived.
• Neorealist, liberalist, and constructivist approaches differ in their
perceptions of the international system, the actors involved, and their
intentions. Accordingly, they also differ in their view of foreign cultural
policy.
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Theories of International relations
• From a neorealist perspective (Waltz 1979; Mearsheimer 2001), sovereign states
are the main actors in international politics.
• States act rationally and in their self-interest, their activities dependent on
prospects and obligations in the international system.
• The anarchic structure of the international system means states will seek the
greatest possible power for themselves.
• Their main goal is security, which includes next to military security the search for
independence and autonomy.
• In this context, foreign cultural policy enables a state to gain or maintain influence
in its international environment. The goal of the state conducting foreign cultural
policy is to influence other states to submit to its interests and values.
• This leads to advantageous economic relations and may also help a state to find
allies during international negotiation processes. An example might be the
investments in organisations of cultural policy in specific countries in order to
gain allies for other international political processes (Rittberger 2002).
Theories of International relations
• Liberalist approaches (Moravcsik 1997), postulate that the foreign policies of states are
dominated by the respective interests of society.
• Similar to the neorealist approach, liberal theories assume rational, self-interested actors
seeking to maximise their own interests, but unlike in neorealism, these actors are not states
but individuals or groups of individuals.
• This approach draws a distinction between actors in the political administrative system and
private actors like companies, economic interest groups, societal actors and the like.
• Thus the liberalist conception of foreign cultural policy depends on both the political
administrative system and the private sector, which guide their respective networks and
dominate material or immaterial preferences.
• For example, ministries in charge of culture might seek to further a policy of language
classes, whereas a finance ministry might act against language courses abroad because they
are costly. Private actors may support language training, as it promotes access to foreign
markets and increased trade flows (Rittberger 2002). Whichever group has more influence
will determine the cultural policy in question
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Theories of International relations
• Constructivist approaches (Wendt 1999) take a different approach.
• They postulate that foreign policy and the behavior of a state depends on the
collective identity of a society, shaped by recognized social norms, including
shared values and expectations.
• These are dependent on two factors: the communality, such as the quantities
of actors of a social system who share those norms; and their specificity, such
as how a particular norm guides or regulates behavior.
• Thus, from a constructivist viewpoint, foreign cultural policy seeks to reflect
the norms and values of a society and guides a country’s behavior in
conducting its foreign cultural policy.
• Also international law, common law, and policies of international
organizations as well as decisions made at international conferences may
shape the foreign cultural policy of a particular country
National Self-image
• National self-images “consist, at least in part, of idealized stereotypes
of the ‘in-nation’ which are culturally shared and perpetuated.”
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Nationalism
• National self-image, like its close sibling nationalism, can have a good
• face and a bad face. Historically, the good face of nationalism is linked to
• the demand for self-government, and often democracy. Similarly, a positive
• national self-image can contribute to stable governance.
• Matthew Hirshberg
– The maintenance of a positive national self-image is crucial to continued
public acquiescence and support for government, and thus to the smooth, ongoing
functioning of the state. . . . This allows government to go about its
business, safe from significant internal dissension, and to expect a healthy
level of public support in times of crisis.
Nationalism
• Paradoxically, positive national self-image also can have a negative effect on a country’s foreign policy.
– For example, Matthew Hirshberg tested the hypothesis that a positive, patriotic self-image
interferes with Americans’ ability to keep watch over the government’s foreign policy behaviors.
– Hirshberg’s subjects were only able to recall details of fictional news stories that featured the
United States doing stereotypically good things, and his subjects re-created the details of news
stories that featured the United States doing bad things (such as supporting nondemocratic
governments against prodemocracy dissenters) in order to select out the negative information
about the United States.
– Hirshberg claims that his findings show that “Americans rarely interpret or remember things in . . .
ways that threaten their patriotic self-image.”
– As a result, he concludes:
• Even if American news consisted equally of information consistent and inconsistent with this
[patriotic American] stereotype, Americans would, at least in the short term, tend to find its
confirmation in the news.
• The stereotype interferes with information otherwise capable of cuing alternative perspectives. This
increases popular support for military interventions that are or can be viewed as instances of a
benevolent America protecting freedom and democracy from a perceived threat, such as
communism. It also allows politicians and officials to elicit such support by promoting the
application of the stereotype to specific conflicts.
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Self-image
• Alastair Johnston sees a dynamic at play between positive self-image and a
negative stance toward out-groups:
– “The creation of and intensification of group identities . . . positively
correlates with the degree of competitiveness with the out-group.”
• Johnston contends that government efforts to promote active nationalism
and group identity have a direct impact on relations between states:
– Identity construction, and its intensity, determine anarchy and how much fear
and competition results.
– Applied to international relations, then, the literature would suggest that
changing intensities of in-group identity affect the degree of outwardly
directed realpolitik behavior, regardless of changes in structural environment.
Nationalism
• Chinese government policy aimed at constructing a Chinese ethno-identity
and nationalism.
• By Johnston’s argument, we can expect such a policy—if successful—to
correlate with an increasingly self-interested, aggressive, and competitive
foreign policy, even in the absence of external threats to China.
• National self-image contains a message (implicit or explicit) about those
outside the nation—our nation is good, therefore other nations are not (as)
good.
• This mirror image may even suggest that vigilance must be the constant order
of the day or the good nation will be at risk.
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Culture And Institutions Of Governance
• A culturally maintained national self-image does more than just influence the
broad notions and directions of a country’s foreign policy.
• National self-image and the culture that supports it also influence the types
of institutions constructed within a state and the foreign policy
decisionmaking authority allotted to those institutions.
• It should go without saying that a people’s culture will influence the shape
and type of its political structures when that people is self-governing.
• For example, once we have found that a country exhibits high degrees of
siege mentality, it should come as no surprise to find mandatory, universal
military conscription
• Example of Israel or Japan
Culture, Institutions, and the Democratic Peace
• The greatest concentration of scholarly activity on the impact of
culture and institutions on foreign policy has been on the idea of the
democratic peace.
• This research finds its intellectual roots in philosopher Immanuel
Kant’s proposition that democracies are peace-loving countries.
• In the first modern variation on this idea, it was asserted that
democracies are less likely to go to war than nondemocratic states.
• In a later version, the idea was refined to the proposition that
democracies do not fight wars with other democracies.
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From Constructivism to the Concept
of the Strategic Culture
• Kenneth Waltz in his Theory of International Politics developed the concept that
international politics is primarily determined by the fact that the international
system is anarchic, meaning that there is no overarching authority.
• In the late 1980s and early 1990s, constructivism has become one of the
major schools of thought within international relations.
• The Constructivism has been described as a challenge to the dominance of
neo-liberal and neo-realist international relations theories.
• The Constructivist theory criticises the assumptions of traditional
international relations theory and emphasizes that international relations is a
social construction. Ted Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism in
International Relations Theory”
From Constructivism to the Concept
of the Strategic Culture
• Constructivist approaches to security seek to understand the way ideas
and norms affect international security and are combined with national
interests or military competition
• The theory of constructivism and the concept of strategic culture
grew in their relevance after the third generation of strategic culture
developed in the 1990s.
• The difference between these two is that constructivism devotes
special attention to identity building, resulting from history,
organisational processes, history, tradition and culture whereas strategic
culture focuses on more variables.
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From Constructivism to the Concept
of the Strategic Culture
• According to Alexander Wendt, constructivism sees state identities and
interests socially constructed by knowledgeable practice.
• Alexander Wendt in his book Social Theory of International Politics (1999) offered
one of the most comprehensive looks at constructivist theory:
– constructivism is a political theory that holds that the structures of
interaction are determined by shared ideas and the identities and interests are
constructed by shared ideas. Wendt’s definition of constructivism has two
tenets:
• “(1) that the structures of human association are determined primarily by
shared ideas rather than material forces
• (2) that the identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed by
these shared ideas rather than given by nature”.
From Constructivism to the Concept
of the Strategic Culture
• His explanation of these two,
– “the first represents an ‘idealist’ approach to social life, and in its
emphasis on the sharing of ideas it is also ‘social’ in a way which the
opposing materialist’s views emphasis on biology, technology, or the
environment, is not.
– The second is a ‘holist’ or ‘structuralist’ approach because of its
emphasis on the emergent powers of social structures, which opposes
the ‘individualist’ view that social structures are reducible to
individuals”
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From Constructivism to the Concept
of the Strategic Culture
• Constructivism understands that the international system is primarily composed
of states (as in neorealism) but also includes other non-state actors (as in
liberalism).
• These ideals guide and direct the interaction of states.
• International relations are not explicitly visible, but according to constructivism
these relations result from a distribution of ideas.
• The assumption is that states have “human” traits. Scholars and state leaders
often address the national “interests”, “needs”, etc. Three leading constructivist
scholars are Alexander Wendt, Friedrich Kratochwil, and Nicholas Onuf.
• Wendt points out that for the constructivist theorist, the main unit of analysis is
the state. However, Walt identifies the unit of analysis for constructivist theory as
on the level of the individual. Both theoreticians point out that individuals are the
main element of constructivist analysis even though Wendt uses the states as
“individuals” in the international system.
From Constructivism to the Concept of the
Strategic Culture
• The theory of Constructivism seeks to explain how the main aspects
of international relations are socially constructed, meaning that they
are given their form by ongoing processes of social practice and
interaction.
• In Alexander Wendt’s text, Constructivism is “the structures of
human association are determined primarily by shared ideas
rather than material forces, and that the identities and interests
of purposive actors are constructed by these shared ideas rather
than given by nature.”
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From Constructivism to the Concept
of the Strategic Culture
• Strategic culture is a theoretical approach within constructivism that stresses
the influence of culture – shared values, practices, and attitudes derived from
social learning with a capacity to change over time – on decision-making and
on perceptions of the self and the other.
• Johnston states that strategic culture draws on history, anthropology,
sociology, psychology, and political science in attempting to relate how
cultures affect the formation of strategy.
– It stipulates that actors may respond to the distribution of power in the
international system by different reactions.
– Strategic culture theorizes that states have unique perceptions of how to use
force and power and how they perceive threats.
From Constructivism to the Concept
of the Strategic Culture
• The concept of the strategic culture allows us to understand the behaviour of actors, why
and how they act and how they interpret the events in relation with the foreign affairs.
• Culture, cultural heritage and traditions have been always important components of our
decision making, judgments and actions.
• The same applies to the level of society and state. The subject of national culture has
become widely recognized as a key dimension in the decision-making, security affairs and
foreign policy, in formulating the strategy and including the impact of culture on a country’s
tendency to use force.
• The authors of the strategic culture concept assume that each state has its own unique
characteristics, that due to specific historical developments of each country we cannot
develop a universal concept of strategic culture and thus every country has its own specific
strategic culture.
• Even in analysing one specific state, we can find a number of strategic subcultures that are
in competition between each other. This logically leads to change in the security decisionmaking
and foreign policy making.
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The First Generation of Strategic
Culture
• The “First Generation of Strategic Culture” appeared in the early 1980’s
seeking to inform and achieve a better understanding of the differences
in American and Soviet nuclear strategy.
• The “First Generation,” included such authors as Jack Snyder who with Colin
Gray
• Carnes Lord, and David R. Jones conceptualised strategic culture under the
terms of “National Style” and “Ways of War”.
– These authors, according to Johnston, defined strategic culture in terms broad
enough to make it practically meaningless, oversimplifying often complex
domestic influences on foreign policy and failing to acknowledge the factor
of instrumentality
The First Generation of Strategic Culture
• Alastair I. Johnston identified three main problems of the first generation.
• First, they had been mechanical determinists claiming that strategic culture tended to lead to
particular strategic behaviour or that strategy was in part a product of the culture.
• Secondly, there was a problem concerning the relationship between strategic culture and
behaviour; some authors assumed that the strategic culture had a measurable effect on
strategic choice and Johnston questioned the instrumentality of strategic culture.
• Lastly, the problem laid in the process of deriving an observable strategic culture and
Johnston asked what sources should be considered as repositories or representations of
strategic culture.
• Johnston also drew attention on inadequacies in the approach and methodology of study of
the strategic culture.
• Mostly, it was criticised for invoking a broad and all-encompassing definition of
culture and that was difficult to establish anything as non-cultural variables
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The Second Generation of Strategic Culture
• “Second Generation of Strategic Culture” started in mid-1980’s and began to
move the concept further, beyond the First Generation’s definition, to analyse the
concept as a strategic decision making tool. Johnston named this generation as
“ambiguous instrumentality”.
• Johnston stated that even though the strategic culture of the Second Generation
was instrumental, it did not originate from political and military elites.
• The approach of the second generation was based on a difference between what
the leaders state and their motives of their actual behaviour.
• These authors saw strategic culture as a tool for political hegemony in terms of
strategic decision-making. The Second Generation tried to fill the gap that was
created by the First Generation. This resulted in diversity even within limited
selection of scholars that have been included in the Second Generation
Third Generation of Strategic Culture
• The Third Generation of researchers of strategic culture was more
profound in its conceptualization of ideational independent
variables while the specific strategic decisions were viewed as
dependent variables
• Johnston defines strategic culture as a “set of shared beliefs,
assumptions, and modes of behaviour derived from common
experiences and accepted narratives, that shape collective identity and
relationships to other groups and which determine appropriate ends
and means for achieving security objectives”
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The Fourth Generation of Strategic Culture
• Asle Toje, continuing to use Johnston’s terminology, even introduced a Fourth Generation
of Strategic Culture at the turn of the century, searching for new emerging actors in the
international arena, such as the European Union and China.
• Andrew Scobell in his article “China and Strategic Culture” also examined the impact of
strategic culture on 21st century China.
• Scobell contends that the People’s Republic of China’s security policies and its tendency to
use military force are influenced not only by an understanding of own strategic tradition by
China’s elites, but also by their understanding of the strategic cultures of other states.
• Alastair Iain Johnston suggests that strategy culture consists of “an integrated system of
symbols (i.e., argumentation structures, languages, analogies, metaphors) that act to
establish pervasive and long-lasting grand strategic preferences by formulating concepts of
the role and efficacy of military force in interstate political affairs, and by clothing these
conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the strategic preferences seem uniquely
realistic and efficacious”
Concept of the Strategic Culture
• Seeing strategies and security policies through the prism of culture and
identity is a fairly new trend. In this context, the most important
element is the culture itself.
• Culture is seen as a variable that can influence behaviour, but culture
can also be used as a theoretical model than can explain strategic
behaviour from a different point of view than that of neorealism or
neoliberalism.
• Along this line of reasoning, decision making in a state usually is left to
the decision makers, and accordingly, human conduct can be
understood only by becoming immersed within a culture
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Components of Strategic Culture
• Jeannie L. Johnson in her book Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass
Destruction created a framework of analysis based on the Identity,
Values, Norms and Perceptive Lens
Identity
• The identity plays an important role in the strategic culture and in the
perception of culture, nation and self.
• Johnson emphasises a nation-state’s view of itself, comprising the traits of its
national character, its intended regional and global roles, and its perceptions
of its eventual destiny.
• The history shapes how the state is perceived and what are its ambitions.
– Chinese history and the lesson of dealing with the western influences in the
19th century have been shaping the conduct of Chinese foreign policy today.
• The identity influences our self-conception and self-perception.
• The nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generations all play rule in the
national identity making. The identity forms both characteristics of an
individual and the characteristics of belonging to a specific group.
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Values
• Every culture has different values.
• A value defines the “…society’s notions of right and wrong, of good and evil, of
proper and improper conduct”.
• The values cover not only the material “real” value but also the immaterial values,
specifically the behaviours that are accepted and expected within a society.
• Every nation has different values that make every nation and culture unique.
• The values include equality and justice, accomplishments, material success,
problem‐solving, reliance on science and technology, freedom, responsibility,
accountability and many other components.
• Every nation also values different attributes differently, for example for some
cultures the human rights are above security, some cultures prefers equality and
justice.
– Cultural values of Chinese society have been shaped by Confucian philosophy
which influences the behaviour, thinking and actions.
Norms
• Johnson states that the term “norms” is problematic to define.
• The norms might be made for all cultural variables as authors writing on
culture and policy have used it to mean both a set of practices, and also the
world of beliefs that inform those practices.
• The norms are “accepted and expected modes of behaviour.
• An evaluation of norms may illuminate why some rational means toward an
end goal are rejected as unacceptable, even though they would be perfectly
efficient”.
• The concept of norms captures a wide range of human behaviour.
• The norms refer to attitudes and patterns of behaviour in a specific
group, to behaviours that are considered normal, typical or average
within the group.
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Perceptive Lens
• Last variable Johnson describes as “beliefs (true or misinformed) and
experiences or the lack of experience that color the way the world is viewed.
• As is widely understood, behavior is based on a perception of reality, not
reality itself”.
• We can name the perceptions of the histories, of our image abroad, of what
motivates others, of the capabilities of our leadership and of national
resources.
• It also covers the security-related ideas that play a crucial role in forming
foreign policy.
• Johnston adds that the national myth represents an important layer on the
regime’s cultural lens.
• It this sense, the myths are defined as standards of victory and as what entails
a defeat.
• Another form of a myth can be a justification for an action.
Conclusion
• In conclusion, with the help of the concept of strategic culture we can
understand why a state behaves, understands, and interprets differently
than another state and how this influences its foreign and security
decisions in the international arena.
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