Psychology, Strategy and Conflict: Perceptions of insecurity in international relations

In this volume, a distinguished group of scholars examines the eclectic approach to the analysis of International Relations and its continuing relevance in the 21st century. A chronic tension exists in social science between the need for analytic simplification ('the hedgehog' approach), such as the neo-classical economists' rationality assumption, and the simultaneous need for synthetic integration of multiple strands of empirical complexity ('the fox' approach), such as the less tidy social-psychological world of behavioral economics. Without the simplifying insight of the hedgehog, theory forsakes the leverage afforded by focused logic in thinking through the essence of a problem. Yet untempered by the reactive empiricism of the fox, theory can be crude, misleading guide to diagnosis and action in concrete circumstances. Another approach, which might be called explanatory 'nesting', is more deductive, yet encompasses features from a range of influences. Hedgehog-like in starting from some basic assumptions, a nesting approach is also fox-like in tracing how a broad set of logically interrelated elements shape how these core assumptions play out in various circumstances. Nesting provides for structured guidance to integrating diverse factors than does a purely inductive regression-style view of causal complexity. Yet at the same time it allows flexibility in exploring how a range of factors come together to shape social outcomes. One example of a productive nesting scheme in the field of international relations is found in the work of Robert Jervis. Considered together, his various research programs on constitute a layered, nested analysis of competition and cooperation in international anarchy. Anchoring his analysis on a parsimonious set of consistent theoretical assumptions, Jervis manages to integrate a surprisingly broad range of considerations across the international, national, and individual levels of analysis, across rational and psychological cognitive processes, across structural and subjective modes of explanation, across positivist and non-positivist epistemologies, and across empirical and normative concerns. Cognizant of important changes in the structure of the international system and the nature of the principal actors, the authors in this volume converge on the proposition that contemporary international relations is best understood through explanatory nesting. Analyzing the current state of Realist theory, signaling under conditions of uncertainty and anarchy, the role of nuclear weapons in international politics and the role of cognition in economic and foreign policy decisionmaking, their eclecticism provides a compelling guide for the future of international relations theory. This book, containing essays by leading scholars, will be of much interest to students of international relations, foreign policy, and security studies.