The Poliheuristic Theory of Decision-Making (PHT) represents a leading theoretical effort in Foreign Policy Analysis

(FPA) to transcend the divide between cognitive and rationalist approaches to explaining foreign policy decisions.
While the theory has only entered the field in the 1990s and is thus among the more recent additions to the FPA
“toolbox,” its basic tenets have already been substantiated through a wide array of qualitative case studies,
experimental works, and quantitative analyses. At its core, PHT proposes a two-stage analytic model that combines a
heuristics-based decision strategy that ties in with cognitivist perspectives on decision-making and a subsequent
stage that corresponds to rationalist expectations. On the first stage of the model, actors apply a range of cognitive
shortcuts that run counter to rational choice assumptions and serve to simplify the decision problem by swiftly
eliminating unacceptable alternatives from the choice set. On the second stage, actors switch to a more thorough and
demanding screening of the remaining alternatives in order to select the option that promises the greatest expected
utility. The most important and innovative feature in this attempt at integrating cognitive and rationalist approaches to
the study of foreign policy is the transfer of the noncompensatory principle of decision-making to FPA on the first
stage of the model. According to this principle, actors do not make trade-offs across different dimensions or attributes
of the available options. Rather, decision makers reject alternatives outright that score below a certain cutoff value on
what they have identified as the most important dimension of the decision, without considering how these alternatives
do in light of other dimensions. What is more, PHT goes on to specify that the noncompensatory dimension in foreign
policy decision-making concerns the domestic political repercussions of the available options. In fact, the prefix “poli-”
in “poliheuristic” theory refers both to the use of multiple cognitive heuristics on the first stage of the model and to the
priority the theory attaches to domestic politics. In other words, the priority of foreign policy decision makers is to
avoid major domestic political loss, and they therefore discard any alternatives that they consider unacceptable on
this crucial dimension. Building on these constitutive features, important theoretical debates in PHT relate to the
operationalization of the noncompensatory principle, its application to different types of political regimes and
governments, and the relationship between PHT and other approaches in FPA.

General Overviews
PHT was developed by a group of scholars around Alex Mintz at Texas A&M University in the early 1990s. The aim
of the theory is to bring together the cognitive and rationalist traditions in studying foreign policy in order to capture
both the process (the “how”) and the outcome (the “why”) of foreign policy decision-making. PHT understands
cognitive and rationalist approaches in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) as complementary rather than competitive
perspectives on how leaders make foreign policy decisions, and it argues that integrating these perspectives in a
single, theoretical framework promises to combine the strengths of the two traditions. Specifically, PHT seeks to
capitalize both on the advantages often associated with cognitive approaches in providing more descriptively realistic
accounts of how foreign policy decisions are made and on the ability of rationalist models to provide deductive
explanations of foreign policy choices. To that purpose, PHT models foreign policy as a two-stage sequential process
that combines a heuristics-based and an expected utility-maximizing stage of decision-making. Mintz 2004; Mintz
2005; and Redd, et al. 2010 all offer accessible overviews of the theory and are good entry points into PHT. Mintz
2004 and Mintz 2005 also serve as introductions to a special issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution and a
symposium in International Studies Perspectives, respectively. Redd, et al. 2010 is a more recent and comprehensive
overview.