International Decision Making: Leadership Matters

Author(s): Margaret G. Hermann and Joe D. Hagan

Source: Foreign Policy , Spring, 1998, No. 110, Special Edition: Frontiers of Knowledge
(Spring, 1998), pp. 124-137
Published by: Slate Group, LLC

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1149281

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 International
Decision Making:
Leadership Matters
by Margaret G. Hermann & Joe D. Hagan

W hen conversations turn to foreign policy

and international politics, they often
focus on particular leaders and evalua-
tions of their leadership. We grade Bill Clinton's
performance abroad; argue about why Benjamin Netanyahu is or is
not stalling the Middle East peace process; debate Mohammed Khata-
mi's intentions regarding Iranian relations with the United States;
and ponder what will happen in South Africa or Russia when Nelson
Mandela or Boris Yeltsin leaves office. In each case, our attention is
riveted on individuals whose leadership seems to matter beyond the
borders of the countries they lead.
Yet, though many of us find such discussions informative, for the
past several decades most scholars of world politics would have dis-
counted them, proposing instead to focus on the international con-
straints that limit what leaders can do. Their rationale went as follows:
Because the systemic imperatives of anarchy or interdependence are so
clear, leaders can choose from only a limited range of foreign policy
strategies. If they are to exercise rational leadership and maximize their
state's movement toward its goals, only certain actions are feasible.
Consequently, incorporating leaders and leadership into general theo-
ries of international relations is unnecessary since such knowledge adds

MARGARET G. HERMANN is professor of political science at Ohio State University

and the editor of the Mershon International Studies Review. JOE D. HAG A N is pro-
fessor of political science at West Virginia University

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 Hermann & Hagan

little to our understanding of the dynamics of conflict, cooperation,

and change in international affairs.
In the bipolar international system that characterized the Cold War,
such a rationale might have seemed reasonable. But today there is little
consensus on the nature of the "new world order" and more room for
interpretation, innovation, misunderstanding, and miscommunication.
In such an ambiguous environment, the perspectives of the leaders
involved in foreign policy making can have more influence on what
governments do. Moreover, as international constraints on foreign pol-
icy have become more flexible and indeterminate, the importance of
domestic political concerns has increased. Scholars of international
relations have begun to talk not only about different kinds of states-
democracies, transitional democracies, and autocracies-but also about
how domestic political pressures can help to define the state-strong,
weak; stable, unstable; cohesive, fragmented; satisfied, revisionist. And
they have started to emphasize that government leaders have some
choice in the roles that their states play in international politics-
doves, hawks; involved, isolationist; unilateral, multilateral; regional,
global; pragmatists, radicals. These differences preordain different kinds
of reactions within the international arena.
Ironically, some of the more interesting illustrations of the effects that
leaders and domestic politics can have on world politics have emerged in
the very literature that originally dismissed their significance. Researchers
have tried to account for why states with similar positions in international
affairs have reacted in varied (and often self-defeating) ways. For exam-
ple, in examining the crises of the 1930s, students of international rela-
tions have puzzled over why the democracies of the time reacted in
divergent ways to the Great Depression and why they failed to balance
against seemingly obvious security threats. Scholars seeking to answer
such questions have looked at domestic pressures and leadership arrange-
ments with an eye toward developing a theory of state behavior.
Although interest in leaders and domestic politics has ebbed and
flowed, scholars who focus on understanding the foreign policy process
have made progress in identifying the conditions under which these
factors do matter and in specifying the nature of their effects. Building
on the research of Graham Allison, Michael Brecher, Alexander
George, Morton Halperin, Ole Holsti, Irving Janis, Robert Jervis,
Ernest May, James Rosenau, and Richard Snyder, they have explored
how leaders perceive and interpret constraints in their international

SPRING 1998 125

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International Decision Making

and domestic environments, make decisions, and manage domestic

political pressures on their foreign policy choices. These scholars con-
tend that state leaders play a pivotal role in balancing international
imperatives with those arising from, or embedded in, domestic politics.
What has emerged is a more nuanced picture of the processes that
drive and guide the actions of states in world politics.

THE ROLE LEADERS PLAY

Leaders Perceive and Interpret Constraints

Leaders define states' international and domestic constraints. Based on
their perceptions and interpretations, they build expectations, plan strate-
gies, and urge actions on their governments that conform with their judg-
ments about what is possible and likely to maintain them in their
positions. Such perceptions help frame governments' orientations to inter-
national affairs. Leaders' interpretations arise out of their experiences,
goals, beliefs about the world, and sensitivity to the political context.
The view that the world is anarchic-embodied in former secretary
of state Henry Kissinger's axiom that "tranquility is not the natural
state of the world; peace and security are not the law of nature"-leads
to a focus on threats and security, a sense of distrust, and a perceived
need for carefully managing the balance of power. Leaders with this
view must always remain alert to challenges to their state's power and
position in the international system. John Vasquez has argued that the
rise to power of militant hardliners who view the world in such
realpolitik terms is a crucial prerequisite for war. Thus, the American
road to war in Korea and Vietnam was marked first by the demise of
former President Franklin Roosevelt's accommodation of nationalism,
then by the fall of George Kennan's selective containment strategy,
and ultimately by the rise of former secretary of state Dean Acheson's
focus on military containment. Describing the vulnerability of empire,
Charles Kupchan has observed that the entrenched belief that one's
state is "highly vulnerable" has led the leaders of declining states to
appease perceived rising powers (consider British behavior before
World War II) and encouraged leaders of rising powers to become over-
ly competitive (Wilhelmine Germany before World War I).
Drawing on a more optimistic view of human nature, scholars such as
Bruce Russett have argued that democracies do not fight one another
because democratic leaders assume their peers have peaceful intentions,

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 Hermann & Hagan

adhere to cooperative norms, and face domestic political constraints on

the use of force. Others such as Ido Oren and John Owen have proposed
that leaders who follow a liberal ideology interpret the world in this man-
ner and act accordingly-they place a higher degree of trust in the lead-
ers of countries they currently perceive are democratic.

Leaders Often Disagree

But what happens if there is no single dominant leader or no set of lead-
ers who share a common interpretation of the world? What if a govern-
ment is led, as in the People's Republic of China, by a standing committee
whose members range in views along a continuum composed of hardlin-
ers and reformers? Or what if there is a coalition government such as the
one Prime Minister Netanyahu must lead in Israel, composed of leaders
with different interests and constituencies and, as a result, various per-
spectives on what is at stake in the peace process?
Before action is possible, leaders must achieve consensus on how to
interpret the problem, what options are feasible, what further informa-
tion is needed and from whom, who gets to participate in decision

.46C-A

AW

Three who counted: Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Joseph Stalin

making, and where implementation will occur. If consensus is highly

unlikely, dealing with the problem will probably be postponed until a
decision is forced or the decision unit can be reconstituted.
At issue are the rules of aggregation that facilitate consensus building
when disagreement exists among those who must make policy. Ideas
derived from studies of group dynamics, bureaucratic politics, and coali-

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International Decision Making

tion building have proved useful in understanding the factors that influ-
ence the shift from individual to collective decisions. Thus, scholars
have found that excessive group cohesion can produce "groupthink" and
premature closure around options preferred by the more powerful poli-
cymakers; bureaucratic interests generally only yield to compromise; the
possession of some "idiosyncrasy credit"-be it vital information, control
over a critical resource, expertise, or charisma--can lead that party's
position to prevail; the lack, or failure, of "rules of the game" usually
means deadlock and a politically unstable situation; logrolling provokes
overcommitment and overextension.
So how can we determine whose positions count in foreign policy? Dur-
ing an international crisis, when the values of the state are threatened and
time for decision making is short, authority tends to concentrate among
those persons or groups that bear ultimate responsibility for maintaining
the government in power. How these individuals, cabinets, juntas, or
standing committees interpret the problem will dominate the state's reac-
tions. Little outside input is sought or tolerated. The experiences, fears,
interests, and expectations of these decision makers remain unfettered and
affect any action that is chosen. Consider the British cabinet during the
Falkland Islands crisis or the Bush administration during the Gulf War. In
both cases, the tendency was to close ranks and insulate policymakers from
both domestic and international influences. Each group recognized that its
government would rise or fall depending on its decisions, and that an over-
ly participatory decision-making process could mean dangerous delays.
The nature of the foreign policy problem can also help to dictate
whose positions count. Economic, security, environmental, and human
rights issues, for example, may all be handled by different parts of the
government or by different sets of actors, each brought together to
interpret what is happening and make judgments about policy. These
actors may not be at the apex of power but are often given ultimate
authority to make foreign policy decisions for the government because
of their expertise, past experience, particular point of view, or official
position. The recent threat of the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission
to detain Japanese-flag liner vessels in American ports over questions
of market access is an extreme example of a well-documented fact: The
power to negotiate-and then ratify-trade agreements is generally
dispersed across ministries, legislatures, and interest groups.
Another crucial factor is the extent to which rivalries exist within a
domestic political system. When authority becomes fragmented and

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 Hermann & Hagan

competition for power turns fierce, an unstable situation is likely to

ensue, with each person, group, or organization acting on its own in an
uncoordinated fashion. Witness the disparate actions in Iran of radical
students, relatively moderate politicians in the Provisional Revolution-
ary Government, hard-line clerics dominating the Revolutionary Coun-
cil, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini following the 1979 seizure of the
U.S. embassy in Tehran. Until Khomeini consolidated his power and
coordinated action, a coherent Iranian foreign policy was impossible.
When authority is dispersed but little competition for power exists, the
result is an oligarchy like that of the Soviet Politburo during the late
1960s and early 1970s: Building consensus among these leaders took
time since no one wanted to concede any authority. The current divi-
sion in the U.S. government between a Democratic administration and
a Congress dominated by Republicans serves as an example of what hap-
pens when consolidated authority is combined with strong competition
for power-each side questions the other's foreign policy record and
often attempts to block the other's initiatives.

Leaders and Domestic Opposition

In addition to interpreting potential constraints in the international
arena, leaders must also respond effectively to domestic pressures. As
Robert Putnam and Andrew Moravcsik have observed, leaders are the
"central strategic actors" in the "two-level game" that links domestic
politics and international bargaining. In the domestic political game,
they face the dual challenge of building a coalition of supporters to
retain their authority while contending with opposition forces to
maintain their legitimacy.
An appreciation of the alternative strategies that leaders use to
respond to domestic opposition is key to understanding how domestic
politics affects foreign policy. Leaders who prefer to avoid controversy
at home often seek to accommodate the opposition by granting con-
cessions on foreign policy. The result is frequently a policy that is large-
ly unresponsive to international pressures and involves little risk.
Note, for example, how nationalistic feelings in both Russia and Japan
have precluded the leaders of these countries from resolving ownership
issues over the islands that constitute Japan's "Northern Territories,"
despite the likely diplomatic and economic benefits of a peace treaty
and normalized relations. Leaders can also seek to consolidate their
domestic position by pushing a foreign policy that mobilizes new sup-

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International Decision Making

port, logrolls with complementary interests, or undercuts the opposi-

tion. By this logic, the political attraction of NATO expansion for the
Clinton administration is that it garners support from two otherwise
contentious groups-liberal internationalists, who favor the spread of
democracy; and conservative internationalists, who worry about resur-
gent threats. Another strategy is to insulate foreign policy from domes-
tic pressures altogether by coopting, suppressing, or ignoring opposition.
Leaders of nondemocracies can more easily insulate their foreign poli-
cies from domestic pressures than their counterparts in democracies.
Leaders in transitional democracies are learning this the hard way as
they face the unfamiliar challenge of having their agendas scrutinized
by an inquisitive press and elected legislatures.

BRIDGING TOMORROW'S GAPS

As Alexander George has observed, practitioners find it di

academic approaches that "assume that all state actors are
be expected to behave in the same way in given situation
policymakers prefer to work with "actor-specific models that
different internal structures and behavioral patterns of e
leader with which they must deal."
Today, scholars who study the dynamics of foreign pol
making recognize the need to bridge the gap between theo
tice. In particular, skeletal theoretical frameworks must b
with nuanced detail. Here, the issue of context looms larg
of state is being examined? Citizens in advanced democrac
ferent wants and expectations than those in transitional
economies, or states involved in ethnic conflicts. They wil
ed to different kinds of leaders to push for their agendas
leaders who are selected view their state's place in the wo
view their state as participating in a cooperative internationa
as struggling to maintain ascendancy in an anarchic wor
view it as part of a regional (Europe), cultural (Arab)
(socialist), religious (Hindu), or ethnic (Serbian) grouping
Which leaders' interpretations prevail in the formulation of
icy depends on the nature of the decision unit and who is
responsible for making a decision. Is an individual (for ex
Xiaoping), a single group (such as the junta in Burma), or
actors (much like the Israeli Labor-Likud coalition cabinet

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 Hermann & Hagan

in charge? When one predominant leader makes the decisions, the focus
is on theories that explore political cognition, political socialization, and
leadership-what is that person like, and how does he or she view the
world and interact with others? When the decision unit is a single group,
the focus shifts to theories growing out of group dynamics, bureaucratic
politics, and public administration-where does member loyalty lie, and is
there a shared view of the problem? If the decision unit is a coalition of
contending actors, then attention must turn to theories of bargaining and
negotiation, political stability, and institution building-is one actor more
pivotal than others, and is compromise possible?
Determining the nature of the decision unit is not always as obvi-
ous as it would seem. A ruling oligarchy might be dominated by a sin-
gle personality. A leader whose authority appears unchallenged might
be answerable in reality to a coalition that helps keep him or her in
power. Who, for instance, is currently in charge of foreign policy in
Iran? President Khatami raised eyebrows in the West when he called
recently for improved relations with the United States. But Iran's spir-
itual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who controls its security ser-
vices and enjoys the support of the conservative Majlis, has openly
ruled out any dialogue with the "Great Satan."
Also consider the Japanese government. As Peter Katzenstein has
pointed out, some scholars view Japan's govemrnment as a highly central-
ized state bureaucracy, as evidenced by the Liberal Democratic Party's
ability to remain in power with few interruptions for 40 years. Haruhiro
Fukui and others, however, have suggested that Japanese governments are
best described as corporatist systems that grow out of a deeply embedded
political norm that requires consensus building across party factions and
business interests. Iran and Japan serve as reminders that understanding a
government's formal structure is less important than understanding whose
positions actually count at a particular point in time.

The Origins of Preferences

To what extent are leaders the products of their cultures, genders, and
domestic political systems? Samuel Huntington, J. Ann Tickner, and
Bruce Russett would have us believe that these ties are quite strong.
Socialization into Christian, democratic, or male-dominated cultures,
they would argue, imbues people with certain predispositions and
expectations. In sharp contrast, James David Barber has pointed out
that the leadership styles of American presidents often derive from the

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International Decision Making

same techniques that helped them achieve their initial political suc-
cesses. Ronald Reagan, who was president of the Screen Actors' Guild
when that organization fought off a communist takeover, learned from
his experience that the United States could only negotiate with the
Soviet Union from a position of strength.
Other scholars have shown that the worldviews of leaders are shaped in
large part by the generation that they happened to be born into-specifi-
cally, by what critical political events they and their cohorts have faced
during their lifetimes. Yet, we have also observed leaders who appear to
have undergone substantial changes in their perspectives. Consider former
Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat and his journey to Jerusalem, former
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and his pursuit of the Oslo accords,
and ex-president Richard Nixon and his decision to open U.S. relations
with China. Arguments abound as to whether these leaders themselves
changed or whether they were merely responding to changes in the inter-
national scene, their own domestic arenas, or perceived opportunities to
attain goals that might previously have been foreclosed to others.
Underlying this debate is the question concerning the extent to which
leaders shape their own preferences. On the one hand, we have leaders-
such as former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Cuban pres-
ident Fidel Castro-who are crusaders or ideologues, highly insensitive to
information and constituencies unless these can help further their causes
or spread their worldviews. These leaders are interested in persuading oth-
ers, not in being persuaded. On the other hand, we have leaders-former
Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani among them-who
appear chameleon-like, their views mirroring whatever other important
players are saying or doing at the moment. They seek cues from their envi-
ronment to help them choose whichever position is likely to prevail. In
between these two extremes, we find leaders-such as Syrian president
Hafez al-Assad-who take a more strategic approach; they know where
they want to go but proceed with incremental steps, forever testing the
waters to see if the time is right for action. Thus, preferences tend to be
more fixed for crusaders and more fluid for pragmatic and strategic leaders.

Balancing Foreign and Domestic Pressures

At times, governments can seem nearly oblivious to the international
arena, focusing instead on matters at home. Consider the Cultural Rev-
olution in China, the Botha regime in South Africa, and former presi-
dent Lyndon Johnson's inner circle of advisers, the "Tuesday Lunch

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 Hermann & Hagan

Group." In each case, domestic conditions isolated the state's leadership

from full participation in world politics. During the Cultural Revolu-
tion, no one was effectively in charge of China. All attention had to be
directed toward the return of political stability. Former president P. W
Botha was a crusader for apartheid and intent on maintaining it regard-
less of world opinion and sanctions. And the Tuesday Lunch Group
suppressed its skepticism and doubt about U.S. involvement in Viet-
nam rather than lose favor with the president. With their attention
captured by events at home, these decision units turned their focus
inward, intent on maintaining their authority and legitimacy on the
domestic front. But the opposite also proves true at times. Decision
units may decide to use foreign policy to help them domestically.
Knowledge about the inner workings of decision units can offer clues
as to whether their efforts will be intemrnally or extemrnally oriented. The
current literature suggests that the leadership focuses on domestic pres-
sures when its opposition sits close to the centers of power, controls
many of the resources needed to deal with the problem, challenges
domestic political order, or has legitimacy of its own-in other words,
when the leadership feels vulnerable domestically. Consider how
Netanyahu's current resistance to international pressure for greater
Israeli cooperation in the peace process reflects not only his own hard-
line convictions but the Likud-led coalition's tenuous majority in the
Knesset, his dependence on cabinet hardliners holding key ministries,
and, more generally, the realignment of Israeli party politics in the 1990s.
There can be a time lag, however, before certain decision units respond
to such domestic pressures. The crusading predominant leader or the high-
ly cohesive, loyal ruling group may try to suppress the opposition or opt to
engage in several diversionary foreign activities before realizing the seri-
ousness of the domestic situation. In coalitions where minority parties
have a veto-as when Fourth Republic France stalled over the question
of granting independence to Algeria or when Dutch cabinets deadlocked
over accepting NATO cruise missiles-foreign policy may be paralyzed as
the different parties work to preserve a government.

Strategic Attribution
Much of what goes on in world politics revolves around interactions
between governments-two or more states trying to gauge the ratio-
nales behind the other's actions and anticipate its next moves. Here,
the critical issue is how leaders assess the intentions and attitudes of

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International Decision Making

their foreign counterparts. Are these assessments derived from person-

al interactions with the leaders of the other state, are they filtered
through other peoples' lenses, or are they hunches and guesses based on
the past behavior of that state, a shared identity, or national interests?
Leaders tend to extrapolate from their own perspectives in solving
problems when they have had little or no contact with their counter-
parts on the other side. But even with contact, a decision unit led by a
crusading leader, for example, will see what that leader wants to see.
When leaders make incorrect assessments, the consequences can be
serious. Nikita Khrushchev's attempted deployment of Soviet missiles
to Cuba in 1962 is one example of how strategies can backfire if there
is confusion as to what the other side's leadership is doing.
Adding to the complexity is the realization that leaders must not
only engage in this two-level game of balancing their own perceived
domestic and international pressures, but must simultaneously try to
comprehend the nature of the balancing act in which their counter-
parts are engaged. Such comprehension is critical in today's multipolar
world, where leaders vary in their interpretations of how international
politics should work and face increased pressure from constituents at
home who clamor for an ever improving quality of life. Moreover, gov-
ernments are becoming aware of the importance of knowing whose
positions count in other states and toward which side of the internal-
external debate these individuals are likely to lean. Without such
information, it is difficult to predict which decision makers will take
the stability of international relations for granted and retreat from
international affairs to deal with domestic ones, which will stand their
ground and take bold initiatives, and which will engage in behavior
that could cause their states to implode.

UNDERSTANDING LEADERSHIP

The leaders who dominated the world stage at the begi

Cold War-Stalin, Churchill, De Gaulle, and Truman
upon reflection to have been larger than life. Today, wit
of the Soviet Union and the expansion of market demo
hard to imagine such leaders coming to power with the
authority. In fact, much of contemporary international
ry would contend that with the end of the Cold War we
exchanged one set of constraints for another. Leaders ar

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 Hermann & Hagan

limited now as they were when superpower rivalry defined their

actions. The key systematic constraints no longer center on security
issues but on economic and environmental ones.
Yet, even in today's multipolar world, leadership still matters. Leaders
are called on to interpret and frame what is happening in the interna-
tional arena for their constituencies and governments. In addition, more
leaders are becoming involved in the regional and international regimes
defining the rules and norms that will guide the international system
into the twenty-first century. Thus, for example, Clinton must convince
a skeptical public and a recalcitrant Congress that it is in their best inter-
ests to free up funds for the United Nations and the International Mon-
etary Fund's bailout of Asia, as well as try to strike a bargain with
congressional Democrats that will grant him fast-track authority.
Rather than proceed with the debate over whether or not leaders mat-
ter, it is essential to continue the study of how leaders work to balance
what they see as the important international factors impinging on their
countries with what they believe are their domestic imperatives. The les-
son to be learned so far is that international constraints only have policy
implications when they are perceived as such by the leaders whose posi-
tions count in dealing with a particular problem. Whether and how such
leaders judge themselves constrained depends on the nature of the
domestic challenges to their leadership, how the leaders are organized,
and what they are like as people. To chart the shape of any future world,
we need to be able to demarcate which leaders and leadership groups will
become more caught up in the flow of events, and thus perceive external
forces as limiting their parameters for action, and which will instead chal-
lenge the international constraints they see in their path.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

For overviews of recent research on leaders, domest

eign policy, consult Valerie Hudson's "Foreign Polic
day, Today, and Tomorrow" (Mershon International
39: supplement 2, October 1995) and Harald Muller
Kappen's "From the Outside In and from the Inside
al Relations, Domestic Politics, and Foreign
Skidmore & Hudson, eds., The Limits of State Aut
CO: Westview, 1993). Two volumes covering a wide

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International Decision Making

phenomena are Timothy McKeown & Daniel Caldwell, eds., Diploma-

cy, Force, and Leadership: Essays in Honor of Alexander George
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993) and Laura Neack, Jeanne Hey, &
Patrick Haney, eds., Foreign Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in
Its Second Generation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995).
The ways in which leaders' experiences, beliefs, and goals can shape
their interpretations of international and domestic constraints are
described in Yuen Foong Khong's Analogies at War (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1992); Charles Kupchan's The Vulnerabil-
ity of Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); John
Owen's Liberal War, Liberal Peace (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1997); John Vasquez's The War Puzzle (New York, NY: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1993); as well as Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy
(New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1994).
Comprehensive statements on psychological perspectives of for-
eign policy decision making are found in Yaacov Vertzberger's The
World in Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Per-
ception in Foreign Policy Decision Making (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1990) and in Nehemia Geva & Alex Mintz, eds.,
Decision Making on War and Peace: The Cognitive-Rational
Debate (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Press, 1997). The different
roles leaders can urge on their governments are discussed in Margaret
Hermann & Charles Kegley, Jr.'s "Rethinking Democracy and Inter-
national Peace: Perspectives from Political Psychology" (Interna-
tional Studies Quarterly, December 1995), and Richard Herrmann &
Michael Fischerkeller's "Beyond the Enemy Image and Spiral
Model: Cognitive-Strategic Research after the Cold War" (Interna-
tional Organization, Summer 1995).
How leaders within a government resolve their differences and build
consensus is detailed in Jonathan Bendor & Thomas Hammond's
"Rethinking Allison's Models" (American Political Science Review, vol.
86: 2, 1992); Paul Hart, Eric Stem, & Bengt Sundelius, eds., Beyond
Groupthink: Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policy Making
(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1977); Ze'ev Maoz,
National Choices and International Processes (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990); and David Welch's "The Organizational
Process and Bureaucratic Politics Paradigm: Retrospect and Prospect"
(International Security, Fall 1992). Applications of decision-making mod-
els by area specialists to non-U.S. settings are surveyed in chapter two of

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 Hermann & Hagan

Joe Hagan's Political Opposition and Foreign Policy in Conmparative

Perspective (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993).
The influence that domestic politics can have on foreign policy and,
in turn, on international affairs, has received increased attention in
recent years. Some of the most important works on this topic are Bruce
Bueno de Mesquita & David Lalman's War and Reason: Domestic
and International Imperatives (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1992); Peter Evans, Harold Jacobson, & Robert Putnam, eds.,
Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic
Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); Miroslav
Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy (New York, NY: Columbia
University Press, 1992); Richard Rosecrance & Arthur Stein, eds.,
The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Comrnell Univer-
sity Press, 1993); Bruce Russett, Controlling the Sword (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Beth Simmons' Who Adjusts?
Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy during the Interwar
Years (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Jack Snyder's
Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition
(Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1991); and Stephen Walt's Rev-
olution and War (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1996).
For links to relevant Web sites, as well as a comprehensive index of
related articles, access www.foreignpolicy.com.

SPRING 1998 137

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