Models of Foreign Policy
Decision Making
PO400
Unit 7
A “Funnel Vision” of the Influences
on International Decision Making
2
Influences on
Foreign Policy Choice

International
– Polarity
 Distribution of power or power ratio
– Geographic position
 Continental
 Littoral
 Coterminous
3
Influence on FP: state/domestic
Why focus on regime type?
Democratic peace theory:
– Monadic version: democracies are more peaceful than
authoritarian regimes.
 Not true: Democracies fight as many wars as do authoritarian
states.
– Dyadic version: democracies do not fight each other
 Although they fight wars against authoritarian states,
democracies almost never fight each other.
– IR scholars have only statistically linked democracy with
a kind of foreign policy fundamentally different from that
of authoritarianism.
DPT (cont)
• Caution: correlation is not causation
• Structural explanation:
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to gain a majority of public support, solutions are moderated and
extremes are avoided
• Normative explanation:
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shared identity and shared norms
• Institutional (rational choice) explanation:
•
leaders of democracies make a rational decision not to go to war with
other democracies.
• Ironically, could be a rationale for war!
• Trend is toward democratization in most of the
world’s regions.
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But transition to democracy is not necessarily peaceful
“Third wave of democratization” (Huntington, 1991)
“Fourth wave of democratization and dictatorship” (McFaul, 2002)
Influences on FP: domestic

Organizational Processes and Politics
 Procedures influence decision content
 Governments are not monolithic
– Bureaucratic Politics
 the “process by which people inside government bargain with
one another on complex public policy questions”
 “where you stand depends on where you sit” (Miles 1978)
- Organizational Politics
- Standard operating procedure (SOP)
- Efficient, predictable but limited policy options
- Small group
- Informal, ad hoc, permanent (with institutional base)
- Groupthink: the “deterioration of mental efficiency, reality
testing, and moral judgment” that increases the likelihood of the
group’s making a potentially defective decision
Influences on Foreign Policy Choice
Domestic political institutions
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Executive branch (the head of the government)
 Most Foreign Policy Analysis Centers on the Executive
Branch
Legislature
 The power of the purse
Court
 Jurisdiction usually limited to domestic affairs
Interest groups
 What do they want?
 How do they get what they want?
Media
 Still the watchdog?
Public opinion
 What influences public opinion on foreign policy?
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Influences on Foreign Policy Choice

Individual Decision Making
– Leaders as the makers of the global future
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Factors affecting capacity to lead
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Assumption and rationality
Political efficacy
Historical lessons
Amount of available time and information
Ability to deal with crisis
Degree of control over actual foreign policy making
Personality and psychoanalysis
Cognitive limitations
 Misperception, bias, wishful thinking
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Rational Actor Model

Throughout this process, the state is
seen as unitary and rational
1. Problem recognition and definition
2. Goal selection and prioritization
3. Development and assessment of
alternatives (cost-benefit analysis)
4. Value-maximizing choice
Rational Actor Model
In this model, decisions are calculated
responses based on the pursuit of national
interests at reasonable costs or risks
 Attractiveness

– it places few informational demands on the
observer

Criticisms
– decision-making is much more complicated than
just weighing objective factors
– Downplays the role of chance, accident, and
coincidence
Rational Actor Model

Procedural rationality
– A method of decision making based on having perfect
information with which all possible courses of action are
carefully evaluated

Bounded rationality (H. Simon 1956)
– Rationality is limited by the information individuals have, the
cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of
time they have to make a decision  satisficing

Perceptions of gains and losses
– people value gains and losses differently
– Risk averse vs. risk acceptant
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Rationality is context dependent!
Decision-making

Why understanding decision-making is difficult…
– No single decision-making process exists
– Decisions are seldom final and tend to lack concrete
beginning and ending points
– There is an imperfect link between the policy process
and the policy outcome
Thus any decision-making model is likely to
oversimplify the problem
 Models offer analytical tools which can be
combined to provide useful insights
