Decisionmaking On War And Peace

Reviewing, comparing, and contrasting models of foreign policy, this volume focuses on the cognitive vs rational debate about decisionmaking on war and peace. It provides alternative models of foreign policy choice and identifies when one strategy is more appropriate than another.

There are two dominant approaches to political decision making in general and foreign policy decision making in particular: rational choice and cognitive psychology. The essays here introduce and test the poliheuristic theory of decision making that integrates elements of both schools. The poliheuristic theory is able to account for the outcome and the process of decisions, and integrates across levels of analysis (individual, dyad, and group). The collection focuses on both elements of the theory itself and also looks at how the theory can be used to better understand political decisions that were made in the past.

The primary focus of the Cross Cultural Decision Making field is specifically on the intersections between psychosocial theory provided from the social sciences and methods of computational modeling provided from computer science and mathematics. While the majority of research challenges that arise out of such an intersection fall quite reasonably

This book investigates collective emotions in international politics, with examples from 9/11 and World War II to the Rwandan genocide.

Undergraduate multi-author textbook by leading conflict scholars focusing on the roots of global conflicts and the various means used to resolve them.

This book uncovers Thucydides’ decision making schemata and his thinking on how people decide, particularly when in power or war. Based on these ideas, the author interprets the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war and the Sicilian expedition, and shows that they were a result of decision making and, thus, not inevitable.

Foreign policy decisions are influenced by many factors. The real world is complex and many variables have to be considered when making a decision. A psychological approach to decision-making facilitates the understanding and explaining of the complexity of foreign and global policies precisely because of the prolonged transitional stage of the contemporary international system. The course of world politics is shaped by the decisions of leaders. Uncertainty involved in decision-making in foreign policy can relate to the motivations, beliefs, intentions or calculations of the opponents. If it is not possible to understand how decisions are made, then maybe it is at least feasible to understand these decisions and, perhaps more importantly, predict various results with regards to international politics. This book provides a new perspective on the study of international relations by analyzing the subjective elements (idiosyncrasies) that occur in decision-making at the individual level. The use of psychological methods of analysing the foreign policy decision-making process proposes a necessary investigation path into international relations.