FOREIGN POLICY

ANALYSIS
Role of individual in FPA + IR
 Role of individuals  Scientific
investigation started in 1950s…
 Is aggression an inherent part of
individual or whether it is a learned
(through socialization) behavior?
 Bringing the insights of psychology in the
FP studies…
 Personality

 Personality is the scientific study of cognitive,

affect, and behavioral individual difference
variables and the ways in which these variables
interact with situational variables to influence
behavior.
 Personality psychology is concerned with the
measurement of such variables and with the
factors responsible for their development,
behavioral expression, and change.
Approaches to Personality

 Psychodynamic (Importance of
childhood)
 Biological (Genetics)
 Trait (Behaviors are trait driven)
 Humanistic/Existential (inherent
goodness)
 Behavioral/Social Learning
(Centrality of learning)
 Cognitive (Perception)
Role of individual open to debate ...

• Some see individuals as largely

unimportant in international relations –
including leaders
• Neorealists – National interest and
international structure
• Radicals – International capitalist system
Some see large role for
individuals
Liberals: interests, institutions, complex
interdependence
• Lots of latitude of decision-makers

•Constructivists: identities, norms,

values
• Major change in IR can be
associated with new leaders bringing
new values to forefront
Role of individual in FPA + IR

 A Key Starting Assumption:

 Rationality is context driven.
 Cognitive scholars propose that it is
possible to systematize our understanding
of basic human thinking to develop
insights that can be used for analyzing
many different individuals in a variety of
contexts.
Models of Rationality
 Two commonsensical models of rationality in
decision making:
1.) rational decision making refers to the process that
people should use to choose. In a rational decision-
making process, people should be logical and orderly.
2.) rational choice expect far more from decision makers
to generate subjective probability estimates of the
consequences of the options that they consider; In
other words, rational choosers are reasonably good
estimators of probability and efficient in the choices
that they make.
Models of Rationality
 logical and order individuals' preferences should be
transitive:
 Preferences are ranked, at least intuitively, in such a
way that
- if I prefer A to B,
- and I prefer B to C,
- then I prefer A to C .
 As part of the process of making informed choices,
rational decision makers should be good at
attending to new information that comes along as
they are making their choices;
 They need to 'update' their estimates in response to
new reliable information
 If the information is not reliable or trustworthy, it
should be discounted or excluded from any kind of
consideration.
 However, determining the trustworthiness of any
piece of information is often very difficult to do.
 Indeed, 'rational' processes of information
management are often overwhelmed by the quick
intuitive processes and deep cognitive biases that
political leaders use to interpret evidence.
 The minimal commonsensical requirements of
rationality in foreign policy decision making
expect that policy makers can learn from history,
and that they can draw some propositions from the
past and apply these propositions in an appropriate
way to the future as they weigh the likely
consequences of the options they face.
 To put these requirements more formally, theories
of rational choice in foreign policy treat both
initial preferences and expectations as given and
exogenous.
 Models of rational choice are powerful because
they can identify the strategy that leaders should
choose, given their preferences and expectations.
 They take original preferences as given and
specify the optimal choice.
 Formal models of rational choice discuss the
process of choosing, they assume that people are
'instrumentally rational’.
 Given their existing preferences, people are
expected to engage in an appropriate end-means
calculation.
 Rational decision makers resolve the conflicts by
measuring utility and simply finding the best
outcome.
 There is by now abundant evidence that foreign
policy decision makers, and people more
generally, rarely meet these standards.
 We are intuitive causal thinkers and like to think
of ourselves as rational.
 The most important evidence of the limits to
rationality comes from well-established work in
psychology and research results in neuroscience
that are challenging the most fundamental tenets
of the rational model.
The Cognitive Approach

 Psychologists began a 'cognitive

revolution' as they rejected simple
behavioral models and looked again at
how people's thought processes shaped
the choices they made.
 They found that people are 'predictably
irrational.'
The Cognitive Approach

 Human as information processor

 Emphasize thinking, planning, &
memory
 Role of beliefs, expectations, & schemas
 Mental construction of reality
PERCEPTION WORKS WITH
How does perception
work?
YouTube Video:

 Reasons for Misperception

12 Cognitive Biases Explained - How to
Think Better and More Logically
Removing Bias
 1.7 million view
 10.08 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEw
GBIr_RIw
COGNITION: Reasons for
Misperception
 Decisionmakers fit incoming info into
their already formed belief systems
 Belief systems are central to select and
filter outside signals + cues.
 Actors generally tend to perceive what
they expect.
COGNITION: Belief Systems
 Cognitive scholars have tried to elucidate the
various kinds of screens or filters that produce
what realists may call “nonrational” or
irrational decisions.
 A belief set is a more or less integrated set of
images held by an individual about a particular
universe.
COGNITION: Belief Systems
 This set of images acts as a screen, letting in
information that fits the belief set and keeping out
information that does not.
 One illustration of a belief set is the enemy image.
 The “enemy” is imagined as evil by nature, with
unlimited potential for committing evil acts.
COGNITION: creation of enemy

 Bad enemy image/moral self image

 I am (We, Turks are) very good and well
intentioned;
 Others (enemies) are immoral and bad guys.
 Appeal to moral principles
 Displacement of responsibility
 Diffusion of responsibility
 Dehumanization of the enemy
COGNITIVE CONSISTENCY
- The images contained in a belief set must be
logically connected and consistent.
- When above criterion does not exist we see
cognitive dissonance.
- Individuals strive to avoid dissonance and the
anxiety it produces by actively managing the info
they encounter
- Individuals are COGNITIVE MISERS:
Individuals are assumed to have limited capacity
to process information.
COGNITIVE CONSISTENCY
- Due to their limited capacity individuals use
shortcuts and analogies…
- An analogy is used to understand a new
situation and determine what to do…
- MUNICH ANALOGY
- This example is used to show that when
someone appeases an agressor the outcome
could be disaster…
MUNICH ANALOGY
 At the Munich Conference of 1938, France and
England followed a policy of appeasement toward
Hitler… They choosed not to challenge him…
 Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia
 They had a hope that German aggression toward
neighboring states would stop there.
 The failure of this appeasement approach in
preventing the outbreak of World War II
subsequently made the Munich agreement a
metaphor for weakness in foreign policy…
 Leaders’ personalities
 Can they help us understand states’ behavior?
 Margaret Herman developed a typology:
(LTA  Leadership Trait Analysis)

 She argued: Two main types of leader personality

that may effect foreign policy
1.) The Aggressive (Independent) Leader
2.) The Conciliatory (Participatory) Leader
Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA)
7 Personality traits related to F.P. actions

1. Need for power

2. Need for affiliation
3. Level of cognitive complexity
4. Trust in others
5. Nationalism
6. Belief in controlling over events
7. Task orientation
 The “Independent Leader”
 Policy Orientations:
 High nationalism
 High belief in control
 High need for power
 High distrust for others
 Low understanding –conceptual clarity
Chavez Stalin
The “Participatory Leader”

 Policy Orientations:
 Low nationalism
 Low belief in control
 Low in distrust of others
 High need for friendly affiliations
 High understanding – conceptual
complexity
OPERATIONAL CODE
 Operational Code: It is a cognitive map that
details 2 dimension:
1.) The normative beliefs held by individual
2.) behavioral (instrumental) beliefs

 Operational code analysis provides a means

of testing a leader’s fundamental inclinations
towards political action.
Smith, Hadfield & Dunne: Foreign Policy 3e

Chapter 7
Foreign policy decision-making:
rational, psychological, and neurological models
Janice Gross Stein
Overview

 Commonsensical understandings of rationality

 Psychological models: the ‘cognitive revolution’

 Neuroscience, emotion, and computation

Commonsensical understandings of rationality

Rational decision-making: the process that people

should use to make choices with intuitively ranked
preferences; good at attending to and updating new
information; capable of weighing consequences. They
need to be logical and discriminating, while open to new
evidence (in their choices), and they need to be coherent
and consistent in responding to logical arguments.
Subjective probability estimates: generating
subjective estimates of the consequences of their
options, updating estimates with new evidence,
maximizing their subjective expected utility

Models of rational choice are powerful because they

can identify the strategy that leaders should choose,
given their preferences and expectations
 These models cannot explain the beliefs and
expectations which lead to choice, a crucial missing
variable in explaining foreign policy
 These two models do not help much in
understanding the process of foreign policy
decision-making
 Work in psychology and neuroscience challenges
the fundamental tenets of the rational model:
humans rarely conform to ‘rational’ expectations
Psychological models:
the ‘cognitive revolution’
 Four attributes compromise humans’ capacity for
rational choice:

1. Simplicity: use of ‘analogical reasoning’ that limits

policy-making options

2. Consistency: employs ‘defensive cognitions’, i.e.

when experts most needed to revise their judgements,
they were least open to revision
3. Poor estimators: use of ‘heuristics’, i.e. rules
decision makers use to process information (e.g.
availability, representativeness, and anchoring),
cognitive and hindsight biases, and fundamental
attribution error

4. Loss aversion: loss overvalued relative to

comparative gains
Neuroscience, emotion, and computation

 New imaging technology of the human brain suggests

that many decisions are not the result of deliberative
thought processes, but the product of

1. preconscious neurological processes

2. strong emotional responses

 Both incorporate subconscious actions and decisions in

progress, with the conscious brain playing catch-up
Impact on foreign policy decision-making

 Reflective, deliberative, rational decision-making

(underlying much in FPA) fits poorly with the cumulative
body of evidence of how humans choose.

 The trade-off between the speed and specialization of

emotions and the generality of reflection may prescribe
different responses.

 The outcome of this competition determines choice.

 Emotion-based system of decision making
(intuitive): preconscious, automatic, fast,
effortless, associative, unreflective, slow to change

 Cognitive decision making (reasoned): conscious,

slow, effortful, reflective, rule-governed, flexible

 Vast majority of decisions made through emotional

system; it is difficult for the cognitive to ‘educate’
the emotional
The human cerebrum
Source: J. Cohen (2005), ‘The
Vulcanization of the Human
Brain: A Neural Perspective on
Interactions Between Cognition
and Emotion,’ Journal of
Economic Perspectives 19, p. 9.
Reproduced by permission of
Jonathan D. Cohen, Department
of Psychology and Princeton
Neuroscience Institute, Princeton
University.
‘The Ultimatum Game’: How would you
choose?
 ‘The Ultimatum Game’

 Rational choice to accept anything that is offered

because it is better than nothing
 Consistent outcome across a wide range of situations
and cultures; player 2 generally rejects offers of less
than 20% of the total
 Rejection driven by a strong negative emotional
response
 Research demonstrates that fear prompts uncertainty
and risk-averse action, while anger prompts certainty
and risk-acceptance.
Conclusion

Rational models of decision making useful as:

 an aspiration or a norm; requires the realisation that

foreign policy decision makers unlikely meet that
norm

 contains counter-intuitive and non-obvious paradoxes

and traps that can be instructive to decision makers

 correcting some of the worst biases in decision

making
 Work only in tandem with approaches discovered
within neuroscience.

 Policy leaders need to be aware of the dynamics

of choice.

 The new research emerging from neuroscience

does not eliminate the possibility of learning and
change.
 The challenge is to understand far better, how and
when emotions are engaged, when they improve
decisions, and how emotions engage with
reflection and reasoning.
Smith, Hadfield & Dunne: Foreign
Policy 3e

Chapter 4: Constructivism and foreign

policy

Trine Flockhart
Overview

 What is ‘Constructivism’?

 Applied constructivism

 The essence of constructivism

 Constructivism meets foreign policy

What is constructivism?
 Although constructivism is presented in this book
as one of the mainstream theories, many would
actually say that constructivism is an approach
rather than a theory.

 Constructivism specifies a social ontology,

however, without specifying which social
relationships it is concerned with.
 Constructivism does not offer solutions to specific
problems in IR, nor does it prescribe any
particular policy directions.

 Constructivism does not challenge either realism

or liberalism, however it does offer alternative
understanding to some of the most central themes
in international relations (e.g. Balance of power).
Applied constructivism
 Applied constructivism might be called a form of
constructivism dealing with the specific question of
how old practices of rivalry and war-making may be
changed through institutionalization, which might
over time change identities, interests and practices,
e.g. European security.
 According to constructivists, the only reason why we
might be in a self-help system is because practice
made it that way (Wendt, 1992:407), and if that is so,
then practice could also ‘un-make’ a ‘conflictual’
culture.

 NATO and the EU could play important roles in

these ‘un-makings’.
 It is necessary to understand how agents’ shared
knowledge, identities and interests are inter-linked
and may contribute to changing deeply embedded
practices and structural conditions.

 Doing so, however, requires a fundamental break

with some of the realist and liberal assumptions
about how the world works.
The essence of constructivism
 The four key constructivist propositions and some of the
key constructivist concepts can be summarized as:

 A belief in the social construction of reality and the

importance of social facts (e.g. NATO)

 A focus on ideational as well as material structures and

the importance of norms and rules (e.g. unspoken rule on
the London Underground)
The essence of constructivism

 A focus on the role of identity in shaping political

action and the importance of ‘logics of action’ (e.g.
Burma)

 A belief in the mutual ‘constitutiveness’ of agents

and structure, and a focus on practice and action
Constructivism meets foreign policy
 NATO’s post-Cold War roles could be defined as:

 keeping member states safe from threats to their security

 maintaining a common identity, shared knowledge and

shared understandings among all NATO’s members
 engaging in transforming relationships and
practices between NATO members and former
adversaries

• Past two decades NATO has followed

constructivist foreign policy
 NATO’s role as an agent for effecting change through
normative power and changing long-held identities and
embedded practices has been acknowledged by foreign
policy practitioners.

 Constructivism has considerable explanatory power in

relation to the durability of institutions.