Rethinking Foreign Policy Analysis: States, Leaders, and the Microfoundations of Behavioral International Relations

A neobehavioral approach to the study of foreign policy decision making, learning, and strategic interaction by the leaders of states addresses the needs of foreign policy analysts in both the academic and policy communities. Scholars and practitioners alike need the concepts, methods, and research designs that can describe and explain the links between the internal world of beliefs , generated by the cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes of leaders and the external world of events , generated by the presence, power, and behavior of other actors. Together the two worlds provide the strategic setting in which "states collide and leaders decide." Reducing uncertainty regarding the connections between these collisions and decisions is important to understand, explain, and apply on behalf of a planet in which globalization, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and environmental hazards are increasing trends in world politics.Stephen G. Walker, Akan Malici, and Mark Schafer present the definitive treatment to integrate theories of foreign policy analysis and international relations'”addressing the agent-centered, micro-political study of decisions by leaders and the structure-oriented macro political study of state interactions in an international system. The first part of this ground-breaking book establishes the theoretical framework of neobehavioral IR, setting the stage for the remainder of the work to apply the framework to pressing issues in world politics. Through these applications students can see how a game theoretic logic can combine with the operational code research program to innovatively combine levels of analysis. The work as a whole demonstrates that relying solely on a state-systemic level or an individual-decisionmaker level of analysis leads to an incomplete picture of how leaders steer their ships of state through the hazards of international crises.